I pulled out my phone and searched my own name.
The headline hit first:
Calendar Firefighter's New Flame: The Desperate Single Mom He “Rescued.”
Then the photo.
Natalie. Pressed against me, her hand on my chest, her body curved into mine like we were mid-embrace. The angle was perfect. Damning. It looked exactly like what it wasn't.
I stared at the screen until my vision blurred.
That moment had lasted ten seconds. Maybe less. She'd approached me at the bar, put her hands on me before I could stop her, and I'd shut it down.
Ten seconds.
And someone had been watching.
Waiting. Camera ready.
The comments were worse than the photo.I threw my phone across the room. It hit the wall with a crack that should have been satisfying, but wasn't.
This was my fault.
Not the photo. Not the article. But everything that made it possible. Every woman I'd hooked up with and forgotten. Everyrelationship I'd treated like a transaction. Every time I'd leaned into the calendar image because it was easier than being real.
Old Shane had built this.
And new Shane was paying for it.
I paced my apartment until the sun came up. The anger coiled tighter with every step, looking for a target. At Natalie, for not taking no for an answer. At whoever had snapped that photo and sold it. At the tabloid that ran it, at the commenters who thought they knew anything about Maya, at myself for ever being the kind of man who made this believable.
Maya had looked at that photo and seen exactly what she expected to see. A player. A liar. A man who would leave.
Because that's who I used to be.
Brian took one look at me when I walked into Engine 295 and knew immediately that something was wrong.
"What happened?"
I hadn't slept, hadn't shaved, and I probably looked exactly as wrecked as I felt.
"Maya ended it."
"What?" Brian set his coffee down. "When? Why?"
I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked from where it hit the wall, but the article was still visible. I handed it to him.
Brian read in silence. His expression darkened with every scroll.
"This is garbage," he said finally. "This woman? I was there, Shane. I watched you shut her down in ten seconds flat."
"I know."
"So tell Maya that. Tell her what actually happened."
"I tried." My voice came out raw. "She said she can't do this. She can't watch Zoe get attached to someone who's going to leave. She looked at me like I was exactly what she'd been waiting for. The proof that she was right not to trust anyone."
"That's not about you. That's about everyone who came before you."
