I Am Only an Actress on This Stage

“I don’t understand where all this is coming from,” His voice was soft in my ear. I turned from my sitting position in front of him to sitting crisscrossed in front of him. Having to explain where I was coming from would be difficult. He was so set that I was his.

“This has to end. In two weeks I’m getting married. And honestly, you and I weren’t going to work,” I stated looking him dead in the eye. His face went from super sweet and caring to angry.

“What do you mean by that?” He asked leaning forward slightly, daring me to explain myself. You would think I would have had this discussion when I first learned that I was going to get married to a complete stranger. But, I had realized that when dealing with someone like Derek, you can’t do anything right. The amount of nights that I went to bed swearing on the bruises on my body that I was going to leave proved that I was on unsafe. It was so much easier to wait until I knew I had somewhere to hide before telling him it was over. It’s not like he didn’t know how the arranged marriage, to a point anyway. He just thought he and I would stay together. That my husband understood that I was only Derek’s and that this marriage was just a means to end my parent’s debt.

“You and I are over. I’m getting married, and moving out of the country. Our relationship is over,” His face was turning slightly red, my cue that I needed to end this conversation and fast. Crystal, my future mother-in-law, was waiting in the car for me. I was going to be staying with her at some fancy hotel. I, naturally, didn’t tell her why. I simply asked her to be my ride so I wouldn’t waste my gas. Even though the marriage is arranged, Crystal treats me as if her son, Jack, picked me himself. For that I was grateful, heaven knows the whole marriage thing was difficult anyway.

“You are mine. Not his. Mine,” He grabbed the front of my shirt, his face inches from mine. I needed to get out of there. Like yesterday.

“No, I’m not!” I quickly twisted out of his grip and took off out of his bedroom.

“You can’t leave me! You’re fucking mine!” He was right behind me, and I felt air rush past me as he went to grab my hair. I kept it short because he was always grabbing for it when I tried to run away from him.

My hands were slick with sweat and my eyes blurry with tears as I ran down the stairs causing my grip on the railing to almost cause me to fall down the stairs. I was so close to being free from him. The fucked up thing was that I always swore to myself I would never be that girl. The abused girl. I always thought I could stand up for myself. Yet, here I was running for my life.

“He will never love you the way I have loved you. No man can look at you and see that you are worth the air you breathe,” He shouted as my hand touch the door knob that led to my escape.

“You are no man. Where a man shows love with his kisses, you show possession with fists,” I retorted as I stepped through the doorway.

“Whoa. Honey, what the hell happened?” Crystal asked me as I jumped into the passenger seat of her jeep. I was too shaken up to say anything and made a motion that she understood as drive.

I was finally free, so why did I feel like this wasn’t over for me? Why did my gut tell me that it was far from over? Surely, Jack wasn’t abusive. I mean, I didn’t think that Derek was when I started dating him. But, Jack seems so kind. His medium length black hair and warm brown eyes didn’t send warning bells off in my head. And his deep voice was soothing to listen to. He was Derek’s polar opposite. Derek, before the abuse actually started, made me feel uneasy. The way his blond hair and icy blue eyes never seemed to settle long enough to make a real connection with anything. It was unnerving how he never really looked me in the eyes, either. Almost as if I would see the future he had in store for me.

I had started to see a therapist a few months after the abuse started. I was so depressed and Mom was worried. She kept saying how awful I was looking and that I just seemed off. Although, with the current situation at hand, she is the off one. Who sets up their daughter for an arranged marriage? And what even was the debt that needed to be settled? Did my mother even know what she had signed me up for? I, sure as hell, didn’t. The Carters were a wealthy family, and I got the feeling that they had secrets. Big secrets.