The Truth Comes Out

As I continue reading Picture Perfect, the story becomes more and more clear about the dynamics of the relationship between Cassie and her husband, Alex. Originally, Cassie is starstruck and amazed that such an amazing and handsome man would choose her to be his wife. But what she realizes all too quickly is that he is VERY good at acting. Almost too good. To a point where she's not even sure she knows if she actually knows the real Alex.
From his perspective, being fake Alex is easier than letting the things that have happened in his life get to him. Instead of admitting that he had a rough childhood, an absent father and a not completely aware mother, he acts. He acts to escape. He thinks that being someone else, with a better story is better or easier than dealing with the pain and the repercussions of his real life.
So even Cassie doesn't know him deeply or completely. Because he's not completely himself. He hasn't come to terms with his story and he hasn't recovered from it, he's just buried it. And Cassie is lost in the mix between his acting and his actual personality. She has loved and married a different man than she thought.
And Cassie realizes this very quickly with her twinges in her gut when she knows that he's acting. She feels manipulated when he is intimate with her, like he thinks it will make up for something that might happen in the future. Like when they went to dinner, he charms her before so that she's prepared to deal with the beautiful women that surround him all the time. Which is potentially sweet and caring, but because of the way it's portrayed, it seems like he's taking possession of her rather than comforting and reassuring her. And while they're at dinner, he gets into a fight with a co-star because the co-star was talking to Cassie. After the fight she feels concerned and worried about how he reacted to the situation, and when he begins to yell and reprimand her for the trouble she caused (by talking to the co-star), she is frightened.
And if this weren't enough, when she returns to their home, she finds some of her secret artifacts that trigger her memory. She realizes that she ran away from home because he was abusive. She lost her memory because he hit her the night that she escaped. And because of the injury, whenever she fell asleep, she probably lost some of the conscious memory either due to the hit or her mind trying to protect her.
The main reason she ran away was not to escape him for her own good, but for the baby that is growing inside her. Alex is adamantly against having children, and because of the way he reacted to her trying to encourage him about the Oscars, she doesn't think telling him will be healthy for her or the baby. She's running away primarily to take care of the baby, because she will not let him grow up with an abusive dad and distraught mother. She wants to care for her child and love him in the only way she can, and that's without a dad.
As she realizes this, she begins frantically packing, to try again to escape from the man that she calls her husband.