Salara’s POV
“Salara.” The sound of Henry’s voice makes its way to me in the kitchen from his place on the couch in the living room. “Derrick will be here soon.” Henry continues without waiting for a response from me. “Is dinner almost ready?”
Sucking in a breath of air, I bite my tongue to prevent myself from replying with the words I really want to say. ‘Dinner would move along a lot faster if you were in here helping me.’ But of course I couldn’t say that because wives are supposed to obey their husbands and hide away any feelings of discontent that they feel.
If I had known that this would be my life five years ago when Henry asked me to marry him, I never would have said yes. I should have left him after that first night when he yelled at me for not having dinner ready when he came home from work. I had seen his type before and I had a feeling it wasn’t a one time thing.
The foolishness of being young is no excuse for sticking through five years of being emotionally beaten down until I am nothing but a shell of the woman I used to be. I almost left him once four years ago, but then I found out I was pregnant and I felt trapped in a marriage that I am miserable in.
Our daughter is now three and is the only happiness that I find in my life these days. If it wasn’t for her I would have given up a long time ago. I guess that is one thing I can thank my husband for. If he hadn’t secretly switched out my birth control pills for sugar pills, I never would have had her.
“SALARA!” Henry’s angry voice cuts through my thoughts, drawing me back to the fact that I still haven’t responded to his question yet. “I asked you a question, woman!” He yells out angrily. I can hear the sound of shuffling feet as they make their way towards me in the kitchen.
Sucking in a deep breath, I brace myself for the emotional abuse I am about to recieve from my husband that is supposed to love me until death do us part. My eyes wander over to the archway that leads into the kitchen from the hallway. Soon enough, the sight of my very angry husband meets my eyes from the entryway.
When I first met my husband during my freshman year of college,
college I wasn’t allowed to complete thanks to him
, he was every girl's dream man on campus. I was so overcome with joy that he had shown an interest in me that I completely ignored the many red flags about him.
With his boyish good looks, it was easy to look past the little things that set off warning alarms within my brain. Because how could someone so good looking be so evil? How foolish and wrong I was at the tender age of nineteen.
Henry stands at six foot, a good ten inches taller than my own five foot, two inch frame. His blonde hair is short around the sides with more length on top that he styles perfectly everyday, because heaven forbid a stray hair ever be out of place.
His body is more slender than a lot of the muscular men that I have seen on tv, but there isn’t an ounce of fat on him which is what drives the girls wild. Add in his baby blue eyes and he is every girl's wet dream. Something that he reminds me of constantly when he nitpicks at the remaining baby weight that I haven’t been able to shake off.
It’s not like I am fat or anything, I am only a hundred and thirty pounds, which is a normal weight for my age and height, at least that’s what the doctors tell me..but try telling Henry that. He constantly critizices me for not snapping right back to the one seventeen that I was before giving birth to Hayden.
“Are you just going to stand there looking stupid? Or are you going to answer my question?” Henry sneers at me. He leans against the frame of the entryway with his arms crossed over his chest, bulging the muscles in his arms. He really is something nice to look at, as long as he’s not talking.
Letting out a sigh, I turn away from Henry and back to the dinner that needs to be removed from the oven. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.” My voice comes out in a soft whisper. Years of fearing his anger has brought me to this point in my life.
It’s not that I fear him hitting me, he has never laid a hand on me or our daughter, but emotional abuse can cut so much deeper than physical abuse can.