Page 36 of The Yoga Teacher

She wasn’t healed.

She wasn’t okay.

But she was still standing. And that was something

CHAPTER TWENTY

Daniel

IT WAS A scene Daniel used to feel at ease in. Their friends had spent countless nights here—drinking, talking shit, decompressing after long weeks. The bar buzzed with its usual chorus of clinking glasses, half-shouted conversations, and bursts of laughter.

But now, it grated.

He’d called. Texted. Emailed.

And still—nothing.

He was tired of the silence.

Tired of her not answering.

The longer he went without seeing her, the more he could feel a mounting pressure in his chest that no amount of work or whiskey could dull.

She was mad. He got that.

But shutting him out completely? No conversation, no confrontation—just absence? It was bullshit.

He wanted to see her. He wantedherto seehim. So he’d come tonight.

The moment he slid into their regular booth, he knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Hannah wasn’t here. But Mia and James were.

Most of the group greeted him warmly enough, their smiles easy, their voices the same. He could tell that they didn’t know. They had no idea that Hannah had left him, no idea what he’d done to cause it.

Mia and James knew. Mia’s lips pressed into a thin, unimpressed line before she turned her attention back to her drink. James leaned back in his seat with a protective arm around his wife. He looked like he was waiting for an excuse to throw another punch.

Daniel ignored the tension, lifting his beer to his lips, masking his irritation. This was ridiculous.Hewas the one who had been cut out of his own marriage, his own life.

The conversation moved around him, voices rising and falling, people coming and going. He wasn’t really listening until Steve turned to him with an easy grin.

“How about those gym gains?”

Daniel blinked. "What?"

Steve chuckled, shaking his head. "Hannah. Mia says she’s been hitting it hard. You must be all over that." He let out a low whistle. "Dude, I bet she looksinsane.”

Daniel’s grip on his glass tightened.

The conversation kept going, but he barely heard it. The wordsHannahandgymbounced around his head, his brain latching onto them like a hook under his ribs.

She was working out now?

Instead of answering Daniel’s calls, instead of letting him fix their relationship—she was turning it into some kind of personalglow-up.

He clenched his jaw. She had walked away from their marriage like it meant nothing.

Mia was still giving him the cold shoulder. And James, sitting across from him, acting like a goddamn saint, had put his fists on him likehewas the one who had crossed some unforgivable line.

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