Page 55 of The Yoga Teacher

And he had repaid her with lies. With betrayal. With cruelty.

Daniel squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead to the steering wheel.

He was doing this for her.

Not to win her back—he wasn’t that delusional anymore.

But because she had deserved better.

And if he ever wanted to be a man she could at least respect, even from a distance…

He had to change.

For real this time.

No shortcuts. No empty apologies.

Just work.

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Dusk had already crept in, laying a dim, slate-colored hush across the walls and floorboards of what used to be their home.

Daniel stepped inside like a man stepping into a grave.

The house still smelled faintly like her shampoo—citrus and rosemary—and the ghost of it hit him like a blow. He stood there for a long moment, just breathing through it, trying not to fold in half.

Everything in this place had her fingerprints on it. But none of it felt like her anymore.

She was gone.

Gone.

And it was his fault.

He moved through the living room on unsteady legs, passing photographs he couldn’t bear to look at.

He pushed the door open to the bedroom.

The bed was still made, but the room didn’t feel intact.

It felt like a ruin.

The little things were still here. Her cardigan slung over the chair. Her earrings in a dish. A dog-eared novel. A stray bobby pin pressed into the carpet.

But the ring—her ring—sat in the center of the dresser, still in the ceramic dish he had set it in that first night, too stunned to process what her absence meant. Back then, he’d told himself she’d come back for it. That she couldn’t leave without it.

He hadn’t known then how far gone she already was.

He stepped closer, the world narrowing to that one small circle of gold.

It looked impossibly small.

And yet it had once held so much. A promise. A home. A future.

He reached for it slowly. Reverently. His fingers trembled as they brushed the metal. For a moment, he just held it there, balanced in his palm like something alive, fragile, holy.

He couldn’t breathe.

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