On my wedding day, my husband slammed my face into our wedding cake. I realized “I leave now… or I may never leave alive”. What I did next left the entire room “in d:ead silence…”

The first thing my husband did after we cut our  wedding cake was grab the back of my neck and shove my face into it. The second was laugh while two hundred guests watched—and in that moment, one thought became terrifyingly clear: I leave now… or I may never leave alive.

Marriage

For three seconds, I stayed still.

Buttercream clogged my nose as champagne-fueled laughter swept through the ballroom. My cheek stung where it had hit the wooden  cake platform beneath the frosting.

Then Derek’s mother, Patricia, shrieked with delight.

“Oh, look at her! Derek, you ruined her makeup!”

Derek tightened his grip on my shoulder.

“Smile, Claire,” he whispered near my ear. “Don’t embarrass me.”

Slowly, I raised my head.

White frosting coated my hair, lashes, and the front of my silk  wedding gown. A thin line of blood trickled from my nostril.

The laughter faded.

My maid of honor, Lena, had gone pale.

Derek saw the blood and rolled his eyes.

“Jesus, Claire. It was a joke.”

That sentence frightened me more than what he had just done.

Because I’d heard versions of it for eighteen months.

When he punched a hole beside my head during an argument, he called it “losing his temper.”

When he squeezed my wrist until bruises appeared, he said I was “too sensitive.”

When he took my phone because I didn’t answer him fast enough, he said married couples shouldn’t keep secrets.

And three nights before the wedding, when he whispered, “Once we’re married, you’ll stop acting like you can just walk away,” I finally understood the man I was about to marry.

So I prepared.

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