Page 143 of The Yoga Teacher

His throat tightened. But hedidhate himself, how could he not?

“She’s the one who decides what she wants from you now. If anything. Your job—if you truly love her—is to respect that. And not step on her future trying to rewrite the past.”

Daniel stared at the floor, the shape of her words slicing into him, clean and surgical.

He nodded. Once. Tightly.

“I’m trying,” he whispered.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”

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Daniel sat on the edge of his bed, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the text box that had been blank, filled, and wiped clean more times than he could count.

He stared at the screen like it might tell him what to do.

Hey. Are you okay?

You left so fast last night. I just wanted to say—

I miss you.

Delete.

Re-type.

Delete again.

He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say anymore. Everything felt selfish. Every word rang with the same pitiful frequency:Give me a reason not to hate myself.

But she hadn’t asked for his guilt.

She hadn’t asked for anything.

She’d shown up. She’d touched him. She’d let him come undone with her—inside her—and then she’d walked away with the kind of silence that screamed:this isn’t about you.

So Daniel stared at the blinking cursor and thought:I would die to hold her again.

But I won’t break her boundaries just to feel better.

He tossed the phone onto the mattress and stood up too fast, like movement could outrun the ache low in his gut.

He was hard again.

Had been, off and on, since the second she’d left. Since the second she’d pulled her shirt over her head and turned her back on him—like she could just step back into the world and pretend nothing had happened. Like it hadn’t cracked him in half.

His body didn’t care that it was nothing to her. That it wasn’t love. That it was transactional.

His body just remembered the heat of her skin. The taste of her on his tongue. The way she moaned when she came—like her voice had cracked open against his mouth.

He groaned and dragged a hand down his face, then slid his sweatpants off with too much force. His cock sprang free, flushed and aching. He hissed through his teeth, wrapping his hand around himself, already too far gone. Already needing.

This wasn’t slow.

This wasn’t soft.

This was desperate.

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