“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just watching.”
He held my gaze for a moment. Then he looked back at the room, and his hand found mine under the table, and stayed.
The program started a few minutes later. The foundation’s director spoke first, then a woman I didn’t know, who’d been trafficking legislation’s most effective advocate for the past decade. There was a video that I didn’t watch. Instead, I watched Corvane. I wanted to know if he would be moved at all by what victims had gone through before being purchased by monsters like him.
Corvane watched the video with polite attention and an expression that gave away nothing. Like he wasn’t the least bit affected.
I was called to the stage next. Jackson gave my hand a squeeze and said, “You got this.”
He was right. I did have this. I walked up with the speech in my pocket, but I didn’t take it out. I had practiced enough. The words were mine.
“My name is Noah Gentry,” I said, into the microphone, into the room. “Eight months ago, I was drugged at a club and taken. I was held for several weeks, sold at auction, and recovered by a private security firm before I could be transported out of the country.”
The room was very quiet.
“I’m not going to tell you that story tonight. Not because I can’t, but because the story I want to tell you isn’t about what happened to me. It’s about what happened after.”
I found Jackson at the table. He gave me an encouraging nod, and I smiled at him before turning my attention back to the crowd.
“The people in your statistics, in your case files, in your fundraising materials… the ones who survived… we live in the after. And the after is long, and the after is hard.” I paused. “What I needed in the after was someone to tell me the truth.That it was going to take time. That taking time wasn’t the same as failing.”
I looked out at the room. At the faces that were with me, listening to every word I said, and I went on to share the difficult process of rebuilding a life. The regular therapy sessions, the resources to start over, and how even the smallest things that had once seemed simple suddenly seemed like climbing a mountain.
“I’m here tonight because I wanted to be in a room full of people who are trying to make the after shorter and better and less lonely for people like me.” I took a breath. “That’s what your support does. It doesn’t undo what happened. Nothing does. But it makes theaftersurvivable. And if you do the work, eventually, surviving becomes something more. Something like thriving. Thank you.”
The applause started, and I stepped back from the podium, and for a moment I just stood there at the edge of the stage and let it wash over me, not the applause, though that was kind, but the fact of being here. Of having said it. Of being the person who was strong enough to walk into this room and tell his story.
I was stepping down from the stage when I saw her.
Corvane’s wife was moving toward the side of the ballroom. She glanced back once at Corvane, who was looking at the podium where the next speaker was standing and not watching her, and then she slipped through a door near the far wall.
I looked at Jackson. He was already on his feet coming toward me, and his gaze was on the door she’d gone through and then on me, and I could see him reading my face and knowing.
“Noah—” he said in my ear.
“Two minutes,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Noah—”
But I was already moving.
The corridor outside was quiet after the ballroom, the sounds muffled behind the door. She was standing near the window at the end of the hall with her champagne glass, and she turned when she heard me. For a moment, we just looked at each other.
“I’m sorry to follow you,” I said. “I just wanted to say, I saw you in there, and well—” I stopped. “I’m not going to pretend I know your situation. I don’t. But I know what it looks like to be somewhere you didn’t choose.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Her champagne glass was very still in her hands. Then she sighed. “I know who you are.”
At first, I thought she meant because she’d just heard my speech, but then it clicked for me what she really meant.
“He told you?”
She shook her head and let out a wry chuckle. “He doesn’t tell me anything. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear things. He won’t stop, you know. You can’t win. He always gets what he wants. There’s no fighting it.”
She sounded so sad and so lost, but she was wrong. I would win because I had Three Bears Tactical helping me, but more importantly, I had Jackson Crowe at my back.
“If you ever need help,” I said, “or if you ever want to talk to someone who can actually do something—” I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the card I’d put there before we left the hotel room. Three Bears Tactical Services with Wolfe’s direct line. “These are good people. They helped me. They’ll help you, no questions asked, no judgment.”
I held the card out.
