Chapter Twenty - Daniel
CHAPTER TWENTY
Daniel
IT WAS A scene Daniel used to feel at ease in. Their friends had spent countless nights here—drinking, talking shit, decompressing after long weeks. The bar buzzed with its usual chorus of clinking glasses, half-shouted conversations, and bursts of laughter.
But now, it grated.
He’d called. Texted. Emailed.
And still—nothing.
He was tired of the silence.
Tired of her not answering.
The longer he went without seeing her, the more he could feel a mounting pressure in his chest that no amount of work or whiskey could dull.
She was mad. He got that.
But shutting him out completely? No conversation, no confrontation—just absence? It was bullshit.
He wanted to see her. He wanted her to see him . So he’d come tonight.
The moment he slid into their regular booth, he knew it wasn’t going to happen.
Hannah wasn’t here. But Mia and James were.
Most of the group greeted him warmly enough, their smiles easy, their voices the same. He could tell that they didn’t know. They had no idea that Hannah had left him, no idea what he’d done to cause it.
Mia and James knew. Mia’s lips pressed into a thin, unimpressed line before she turned her attention back to her drink. James leaned back in his seat with a protective arm around his wife. He looked like he was waiting for an excuse to throw another punch.
Daniel ignored the tension, lifting his beer to his lips, masking his irritation. This was ridiculous. He was the one who had been cut out of his own marriage, his own life.
The conversation moved around him, voices rising and falling, people coming and going. He wasn’t really listening until Steve turned to him with an easy grin.
“How about those gym gains?”
Daniel blinked. "What?"
Steve chuckled, shaking his head. "Hannah. Mia says she’s been hitting it hard. You must be all over that." He let out a low whistle. "Dude, I bet she looks insane .”
Daniel’s grip on his glass tightened.
The conversation kept going, but he barely heard it. The words Hannah and gym bounced around his head, his brain latching onto them like a hook under his ribs.
She was working out now?
Instead of answering Daniel’s calls, instead of letting him fix their relationship—she was turning it into some kind of personal glow-up.
He clenched his jaw. She had walked away from their marriage like it meant nothing.
Mia was still giving him the cold shoulder. And James, sitting across from him, acting like a goddamn saint, had put his fists on him like he was the one who had crossed some unforgivable line.
He’d never physically attacked someone.
He shouldn’t have cheated on Hannah, he knew that, but it didn’t have to be like this.
Hannah never would have known if she hadn’t walked in on him. If she hadn’t barged into a private moment.
It wasn’t like she caught him in some affair . It wasn’t like he had feelings for Sienna.
It was just sex.
He would never have left his wife.
The idea of her in some gym, working out, looking “ insane ”—like she was already moving forward, like she was fine —made something dark curl in his chest.
It wasn’t supposed to be this easy for her to forget him.
He drained his beer and set it down with more force than necessary. The conversation had moved on, but Daniel was still stuck on that one detail. Hannah at the gym. Hannah looking different. Hannah being fine without him. He needed to see it for himself.
He needed to see her.
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He was parked outside the gym.
Her gym.
Daniel sat behind the wheel, engine off, hands clenched around the steering wheel like he was bracing for impact.
He was here to talk to her. But now that he was here, now that he could see the entrance and imagine her walking through it at any moment—
He couldn’t move.
He wouldn’t go inside. He wasn’t that guy. He wouldn’t corner her in public, force her into a conversation she didn’t want. He’d just… wait.
Just see her.
And then—like his thoughts had conjured her—she appeared.
Hannah.
Head high. Shoulders squared. A bag slung over one shoulder, hair tied back.
His breath caught.
She looked incredible.
Not because of what she was wearing. Not because of the shape of her legs or the flush in her cheeks.
But because she looked whole.
Like she wasn’t even thinking about him.
And he couldn’t move.
The words he’d rehearsed— I’m sorry. I miss you. Please just look at me —all evaporated. He just sat there, hands shaking slightly on the wheel, watching her move through the parking lot like she didn’t know he existed.
Daniel’s fingers curled tighter around the wheel, knuckles turning white.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
She was supposed to be upset . Sad. Processing.
Not thriving. Not glowing. Not walking through the parking lot with a confidence that had nothing to do with him anymore.
Daniel felt something twist inside him.
Because she was fine.
And he wasn’t.
His chest felt tight.
He had told himself—over and over again—that he just needed to talk to her, that once she calmed down, once she had time to process, she would understand.
But looking at her now, seeing the way she carried herself, the way she existed so easily in a space that had nothing to do with him, he realized something sickening.
She was leaving him behind.
She got into her car, rolling her shoulders back before pulling her seatbelt across her chest.
She wasn’t crying.
She wasn’t hesitating.
She wasn’t looking like she missed something.
And as she pulled out of the parking lot without so much as a glance in his direction, Daniel felt a sinking, crushing weight.
Hannah was moving on.
And he was still stuck in the wreckage.