Page 70 of The Yoga Teacher

She was silent.

He kept going.

Because this was hers now. This pain. This knowledge. This reckoning.

“She blew me,” he said. “In the back office. After class.”

He couldn’t look at her. He stared at the floor. He could feel the ring—herring—where it lay heavy against his chest.

A weight. A wound. A penance.

“I fucked her from behind,” he said, the words thick and dry. “Fast. Hard.”

It was so far from what he had with Hannah.

So far from love.

It made him want to vomit.

“She liked it when I pulled her hair,” he added, voice shaking.

The silence between them turned cavernous. And still, she didn’t cry.

But her arms tightened. Her jaw flexed. She was splintering quietly, and he hated himself for every crack.

“It was the showers next,” he said. “After class. I—” He broke off, throat raw. “It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t gentle.”

The words crawled out of him like rot.

“I went down on her.”

That shattered something.

Hannah recoiled. Not dramatically. But fully.

She flinched like she’d been slapped. Her face twisted, not in anger—but in grief, in humiliation, in something he didn’t even have a name for.

Her hands came up, shaking now, clutching the sleeves of her sweater. Her breathing was shallow and fast, like she couldn’t take in air.

Daniel stood up. Too fast. Too instinctive.

“Don’t,” she said, stepping back.

He stopped.

Just like that.

Arms limp at his sides. Eyes wide. Heart breaking over and over and over again.

He had done this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, uselessly. “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

He looked at her like she was sacred.

And she just stood there. Strong. Shaking. Still standing.

It felt like he was cut open, but he wished it hurtmore. He wished it could burn the part of him that ruined her.

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