Afterlife Read Online Free PDF Page B

went from a standing pose into a
    half-lotus.
    “Al right?” He was watching her so
    closely. That, plus the
    gentleness of his tone in the quiet
    room, made her feel like
    his question was directed to
    something far beyond her
    mere physical state. She had to swal
    ow before she
    answered.
    “Yes. Just overdid a bit. Joints aren’t
    as resilient as they
    once were.”
    “You look superbly flexible to me.
    But sometimes we
    push ourselves too hard when we’re
    trying to outrun things.”
    He had a way of saying things like
    that, with such
    unruffled calm, as if it was
    completely normal to venture
    past the intimate edges of a person’s
    psyche.
    “Like time?” The halfhearted joke,
    the attempt to turn him
    away from the sharp boundaries,
    didn’t do the trick. His
    attention didn’t waver.
    “Things you’re afraid to want.”
    Candlelight, heated room, heart rates
    slowly evening out.
    At his words, hers stepped up a pace,
    making her feel a
    little lightheaded, though she was
    already sitting down. She
    made what she hoped was a
    noncommittal noise, gave him
    her practiced distant smile that
    warned he was stepping
    over a line. As she put her hands on
    her knees, she
    adjusted the fake wedding band with
    one finger, knowing
    the sparkle would catch the
    candlelight. When his attention
    went to it, she shut him out further by
    closing her eyes,
    starting their breathing sequence
    again.
    She kept her ears attuned to it, knew
    when he was
    matching his breath to hers, fol owing
    her deep inhale, the
    slow exhale. She focused on her
    posture, on grounding and
    centering herself. Supposedly yoga
    practice helped a
    person connect to divine energies.
    Today her focus
    cavorted outside her grasp like a not-
    so-playful poltergeist.
    The demons she’d hoped to leave
    behind had only swel ed
    in size, such that instead of peace and
    calm, her stomach
    had been invaded by flesh-eating
    beetles from The
    Mummy movies.
    Al because of one simple, utterly
    truthful statement.
    Things you’re afraid to want. Damn
    him. Didn’t he
    understand she couldn’t afford these
    types of games?
    She’d long ago lost her ability to risk
    the playful nature of
    romance. Like a child who pretended
    to play dead during
    heroic games, but then saw actual
    death, she knew what
    such games meant now. The reality of
    love was dark and
    damaging, a morass she couldn’t face
    again.
    When she lay down on her back,
    straightening out her
    arms and legs for the savasana , the
    Corpse pose, the sad
    irony wasn’t lost on her. She refused
    to let herself look
    toward him, until she heard the
    shifting of his mat. She
    cracked open an eyelid to see that
    he’d aligned his mat
    next to hers and was now lying down,
    emulating the stretch.
    His spread fingers were within an
    inch of hers.
    She wasn’t sure how to react, what to
    do. He was doing
    nothing at al wrong. Maybe he was
    inside the personal
    space margin, considering there was
    the whole classroom
    floor to use, but he wasn’t touching
    her. Not technical y. In
    the space between their paral el
    bodies, she felt the
    compressed heat of two auras, and
    was hyper aware of
    every long, lean portion of the body
    next to her.
    “Having trouble hearing?” Another
    weak joke, delivered
    with a touch of desperate acid. She
    wished she could take
    it back, because she didn’t want to be
    mean to him. She
    just needed him to leave her alone.
    But she also needed
    him to never stop coming to her
    class, so she could stil
    have the guilty pleasure of dreaming
    impossible dreams.
    “I wanted to be closer to you.”
    She turned her head then, but he had
    his eyes closed.
    “Walk us through it like you normal y
    do,” he said. “I want to
    hear your voice.”
    Rachel resolutely closed her eyes.
    She took them
    through the steps of putting the body
    in a neutral position,
    pushing out the legs, lifting and
    flattening out the pelvis,
    softening the groin area. Lifting the
    skul to push the