Millie rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "You sound like my mom."
"Your mother knows how things work."
After Millie left and Zoe retreated to her room with barely a goodnight, I found myself on the fire escape.
The metal was cold through my jeans. The city sprawled below me, lights glittering in windows, cars inching through traffic, the distant wail of a siren. Somewhere out there, people were living easier lives. Lives without judgment, without exhaustion, Without the constant, grinding need to prove they deserved to exist.
I'd been fighting for thirteen years. Fighting to be taken seriously. Fighting to be seen as more than my worst moment. Fighting to give Zoe everything I never had.
I didn't know how much longer I could keep going.
But I didn't know how to stop.
The stack of essays sat beside me. Twenty-six stories about bravery, written by kids who still believed courage was something that happened in big, dramatic moments. Slaying dragons. Standing up to bullies. Saying the scary thing out loud.
They didn't know yet how much of life was just getting up. Showing up. Keeping going when every part of you wanted to stop.
Maybe that was a kindness. Maybe they'd figure it out soon enough, the way everyone did.
For now, I'd let them believe in dragons.
CHAPTER 2
Shane
Three months ago,I woke up next to a woman whose name I couldn't remember, in an apartment I didn't recognize, with a hangover pounding behind my eyes and the sudden, crystal-clear realization that I had no idea how I'd gotten here.
Any of it. Not just last night. The last three years.
She was beautiful. Long dark hair spilled across the pillow, one bare shoulder visible above the sheets, features so perfect they felt unreal in the pale morning light. The kind of woman who turned heads everywhere she went, who'd probably never been told no in her life.
They were always beautiful. That was part of the pattern.
That was the thing about being the guy from the calendar, the guy from the viral video, the guy whose face had been plastered across every news station in the city for three weeks straight. Beautiful women threw themselves at you. They laughed at jokes that weren't funny, touched your arm at bars, slipped their numbers into your pocket without being asked.
And I'd let them. Over and over. Because it was easy, and I was empty, and filling that emptiness with strangers felt better than sitting alone with it.
I eased out of bed, careful not to wake her. Found my jeans crumpled on the floor, my shirt draped over a chair I didn't remember sitting in.
The apartment was nice. Exposed brick, big windows, the kind of minimalist furniture that cost more than it looked. She had good taste. She probably had a good job, a good life, friends who cared about her.
I let myself out without leaving a note. The hallway was quiet, morning light slanting through a window at the end of the corridor. I checked my phone. 6:47 AM. A dozen notifications I didn't want to read.
Outside, Queens was waking up. Delivery trucks double-parked on the avenue. A woman walking her dog, coffee in hand. The guy from the bodega on the corner hosing down the sidewalk, same as he did every morning, same as he'd done for the twenty years I'd been walking these streets.
I started the long walk home, yesterday's clothes rumpled and stale, my head throbbing with every step. Caught my reflection in a shop window and stopped.
I didn't recognize the man staring back: bloodshot eyes, stubble that had crossed from intentional to neglected, the face of a man who'd stopped taking care of himself and hoped no one would notice.
He looked tired. Hollowed out. Like someone had scooped out everything that mattered and left just the shell, the smile, the performance.
When did this happen? When did I become this guy?
I knew the answer. I just didn't want to look at it.
Three years ago, I'd pulled three kids from a collapsing brownstone in Brooklyn. The building came down thirty seconds after I got the last one out. Someone had filmed it. The video went viral. Suddenly, I wasn't just a firefighter anymore. I was a hero. A headline. A face people recognized on the street.
The guys at the station gave me hell for it, the way they gave everyone hell for everything. But underneath the jokes, something shifted. The brass started putting me in front of cameras. Community events. School visits. The face of Engine 295, whether I wanted to be or not.
