Page 120 of The Yoga Teacher

And he’d looked down on that. Thought it was beneath him. Community work. Volunteer coordination. He used to comehome from client dinners and brag about budgets while she prepped garden kits or wrote newsletters or chased grants.

He used to think she was wasting her potential.

Now he saw it clear.

She had always been miles ahead of him. Not just emotionally. Not just morally.

Inevery waythat counted.

He was a fraud. He was a husband who’d betrayed the best thing he’d ever had.

His chest twisted.

It wasn’t just that he’d cheated. It was who he cheated on.

Hannah.

He closed his eyes.

She had loved him wholly, with a kind of trust he hadn’t earned. She had offered him grace, over and over, and he had taken that grace and burned it for something stupid and hollow. For a moment of vanity. For a woman whose name he could barely say now without feeling bile in his throat.

And the worst part? The most unforgivable thing?

Hannah hadbelievedin him.

She’d believed he was a good man. She’dchosenhim—again and again.

And he’d thrown her into the fire just to feel wanted for five fucking minutes.

His stomach turned.

He had used her trust like a weapon. Betrayed her body, her heart, her home. And for what?

Fornothing.

Now she was out there building a life from the ashes he left behind. Creating beauty from wreckage. Standing taller, growing stronger, becoming even more luminous without him.

And he—

He was sitting here on a rooftop.

He looked down at his hands. They didn’t feel like his anymore. They were the hands that had held another woman. That had touched someone else while still wearing his wedding ring.

He should never be allowed to touch Hannah again.

And still—God help him—he wanted to. Not even sexually. Just to feel her pulse beneath his fingertips. Just to remind himself what real love had felt like.

Because she was it.

She was the thing. The truth. The axis he used to spin around.

And now?

Now he was orbitless. Empty. Grounded in shame.

He deserved it.

He deserved worse.

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