Page 47 of The Yoga Teacher

His mother? He couldn’t bear her knowing what he’d done.

His father?

He hesitated.

It was a bad idea.

His father wasn’t the kind of man you went to for comfort. He didn’t do emotion. He didn’t do reflection. He was the kind of man who told you to get up and get over it, to stop wallowing and be a man.

And yet. He needed something.Someone. Even if it was the wrong someone.

Daniel’s grip on the phone tightened.

Maybe he’d offer a path. Something ugly but direct.

He grabbed his keys with shaking hands, moving like he wasn’t fully inside his body.

The walls of the house felt too close. The air too thick. Her absence screamed in every quiet corner.

He paused in the doorway, glancing once—stupidly—at the coat she used to hang there.

Gone.

He closed his eyes.

He had spent so much of his life trying not to be his father. Trying tounlearneverything the man had taught him about women, and love, and failure. And yet here he was.

Desperate. Lost. Running to the last place he should go, just to find something that might stop the bleeding.

The drive blurred around him—lights and turns and road signs he didn’t see. Just Hannah. Her face. The look in her eyes when she’d said“I will never forgive you.

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He didn’t want to be here. But he had nowhere else to go.

Hannah was gone. Gone in every way that counted. And still—still—he kept hoping for a thread. A splinter of hope he could hold in his fists. Something to tell him it wasn’t over.

He knocked.

Isabella answered the door, her brows lifting when she saw him. Her expression flickered—surprise first, then weariness. A little disdain.

“Daniel.”

His throat felt dry. “Is my father here?”

She didn’t answer right away. Just scanned him—face drawn, eyes hollowed out from days without sleep. She saw it all. She always had.

Then she sighed and stepped back, opening the door wider. “Of course not.”

Daniel hesitated, just long enough to feel the shame crawl across his skin. Then he stepped inside, the air cooler than he remembered. Unwelcoming.

His father’s house hadn’t changed. Sleek surfaces. Faux comfort. A sense of wealth without warmth. Decor rotated out like seasonal fashion. None of it meant anything.

Neither did the people, usually.

Isabella. Older than Daniel by only a few years. His father’s latest version of "forever."

She closed the door behind him, crossing her arms and leaning against it. “You look like shit.”

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