Page 67 of The Yoga Teacher

If Daniel could throw everything away for a moment of physical selfishness, then she could choose something too. Onher terms. For her pleasure. She wouldn’t let his betrayal define what she was allowed to feel anymore.

"I wouldn't mind something less complicated." Her voice was steady, even as her heart hammered against her ribs. She spoke quietly. “Something just…physical."

A flicker of surprise crossed his face. For a moment, she thought she'd misread everything, made a horrible mistake.

Then he smiled—slower this time, his eyes darkening. "I can work with uncomplicated," he said, voice dropping to match her near-whisper. "In fact, I excel at uncomplicated."

Hannah felt a rush of something. This wasn't the Hannah who had built her life around someone else's promises. This was someone new—someone who could take what she wanted without pretending it was forever.

She didn’t need forever. Not anymore. She just needed to stop feeling like Daniel was the only story she’d ever tell.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Daniel

THE TEXT CAME just after noon.

I'll be by tomorrow for the rest of my things.

Daniel read it once. Then again.

There was no anger in it. No bitterness. Just a fact, plain and clean.

Still, it hit like a punch to the ribs.

He sat on the edge of the bed, phone loose in his hand. The quiet in the house pressed in around him. She wasn’t asking for a conversation. She wasn’t opening a door. She was coming to close one.

For good.

He exhaled slowly and stood.

He wasn’t going to make her pack her own things. He wouldn’t let her walk room to room, collecting scraps of herself like she hadn’t already lost enough.

He would do it.

He would do it right.

He started in the kitchen.

Her favorite mug—the one with the tiny chip in the rim, the one she always reached for—he wrapped it in a dish towel and placed it carefully in the box. The teas she kept in a separate jar, labeled in her looping script. Her reusable grocery tote with the faded logo. All of it went in, one soft goodbye at a time.

He moved through the house with quiet hands.

In the bathroom, her shampoo, her face cream, the razor with the pink handle she always left on the edge of the tub.

In the hallway closet, her slippers. Her spare charger. A box of tampons he almost didn’t notice.

None of it was his. But all of it had been part of the life they built.

And this house—it had been her sanctuary.

The memory were almost painful. Her curled up in the reading chair, her voice lilting with excitement as she picked paint samples, the way she’d kept fresh flowers in a mason jar on the kitchen table because it made the space feel “like someone lived here with intention.”

She had loved this house.

She hadmadethis house.

And he—

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