Page 50 of The Yoga Teacher

She needed someone who didn’t cause the wound in the first place.

His stomach twisted.

He thought about that first night—when she found out. The way her voice had cracked. The way her whole body had gone still like something inside her had snapped clean in half.

He’d done that.

Hebrokeher.

And he kept calling it a mistake, like that made it smaller, like that word could shrink the devastation into something manageable.

But it wasn’t small. It was everything.

His hands shook as he stood, wandering toward the bedroom. Their bedroom. The bed still made. The pillow she hadn’t slept on in weeks.

He sank down on the edge and stared at the wall. Not seeing it.

He remembered her laughter. Her morning voice. The way she used to hum when she made tea. The way she’d once pulled him close and whispered,"We’re going to be the kind of old couple everyone rolls their eyes at."

He wanted that.

He wanted that future. But he had set fire to it. With his own two hands.

He lay down across the comforter, curled in on himself like a child, chest burning with grief that had nowhere to go.

He wanted to go back.

He wanted to rewind time and slap the younger version of himself who thought a passing thrill could somehow fix the feeling of being lost. Who thought it would be harmless, private, containable.

He wanted to scream.

But the house wouldn’t care.

The walls wouldn’t echo.

And Hannah wouldn’t hear him.

She wasn’t coming back.

And maybe the worst part—maybe the part that really tore him in half—was the truth that had bloomed, brutal and undeniable, inside the silence that followed Isabella’s words:

He wouldn’t have taken himself back either.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Hannah

THE OFFICE WAS quiet for once.

Just the soft hum of the air vents, the occasional click of a keyboard from down the hall, and the rhythmic thud of Hannah’s own pulse in her ears.

She sat at her desk, one hand curled around a cup of tea gone cold, the other hovering near her mouse, but not clicking.

Her inbox was full. So was her chest.

Too many messages. Too many memories. And none of it felt real anymore.

She used to love this place—its warmth, its mission, the smell of soil drifting in from the community garden, even the cracked tile under her desk.

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