I was saying it for myself, and perhaps for the version of me who had spent years believing that if I were only quiet enough, accommodating enough, small enough, the storms would stop coming.

They had never stopped coming.

I had simply absorbed them.

And the difference, the whole of the difference, was that I had finally stopped volunteering to be the thing the storm broke against.”

His gaze flicked, almost involuntarily, to my shoulder.

“And then you struck me,” I said again, quietly, so that the nearest tables would hear it clearly, “in front of two hundred witnesses.”

A hotel security manager was already approaching the stage, and with him were two police officers.