Page 158 of The Yoga Teacher

“I love you,” Daniel said. “I always have. I always will.”

The words didn’t ring hollow.

They weren’t desperate or bright or shiny.

They were tired. Earnest. Carved straight from the truth of him.

He inhaled shakily. “I want to be your husband again.”

Hannah’s breath caught, like her body didn’t know whether to break or brace.

“I know I don’t deserve it,” he went on, quieter now. “I know I’ve forfeited every right to ask. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want it. Not out of guilt. Not out of fear. Just… because I know what it means now. I know what you’re worth. I know what I threw away.”

She didn’t move.

Couldn’t.

The ache in her chest felt too big to name.

Daniel’s voice cracked on the last word. “I want to come home. If you'll let me.”

For a long moment, the only sound was her breath and the soft ticking of Dr. Ellis’s wall clock.

She didn’t say anything.

Not yet.

But for the first time since everything shattered, she didn’t feel like she was drowning alone.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Daniel

HE GRIPPED THE steering wheel in the parking lot.

The engine wasn’t running.

The world outside the windshield was ordinary. A woman walked her dog. A man on a bike swerved around a pothole. The clouds hung low, gray and pilled and nothing like the world inside his chest.

He couldn’t breathe.

Not properly.

Her voice echoed like a bell inside his skull. Still ringing. Still slicing him open.

He pressed his palms to his eyes, hard, like he could squeeze the memory out of his head. But there was no forgetting that session. No escaping the precision of her voice, or the cold truth of every word.

She hadn’t yelled.

She hadn’t cried—not until the very end.

And that was somehow worse.

Daniel had gone in ready for anger. For thrown words and fire. For tears and shaking fists and every ugly thing he knew he deserved.

But she’d sat there—controlled, sharp,whole—and handed him his failure like a sentence.

You broke something I didn’t know could break.

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