Page 160 of The Yoga Teacher

Still unsigned. Still tucked into the drawer beneath her tax files. She hadn’t decided what came next. But she didn’t want her next move to be a reaction. She wanted it to behers.

No more decisions made out of fury. Or pain. Or weakness.

Just intention.

She dropped into her stance. Feet planted. Spine tall.

Breathed in.

Lifted.

The bar rose smooth—cleaner than ever. Heavier than ever. A new number.

A new line crossed.

She locked out at the top, muscles trembling, her whole body alive with effort and ownership.

This.

This was hers.

The strength. The discipline. The choice to show up and carry something that had once felt impossible.

She lowered the bar with control and stepped back, chest heaving.

She wasn’t healed. Not fully.

But she wasn’t broken either.

She sat on the bench, wrapping her hand in the edge of her tank top, wiping the sweat from her neck.

Why did it still feel like this?

That session should have given her clarity. She’d asked for truth. And she’d gotten it. All of it—his insecurity, his cowardice, his need to be adored. The ugliness of it had laid him bare.

And she’d looked him dead in the face and told him what he broke.

Told him that it hurt.

Told him that itmattered.

So why—why—was the ache still there?

Not the ache for sex. Not the echo of his hands or the way his voice had sounded against her skin.

This was worse.

This was the part she didn’t want to say aloud.

Shewanted him.

Still.

Not as a body. Not as a mistake. Not even as some version of redemption.

She wanted him ashers.

Her Daniel. The one she’d imagined a life with. The man who would’ve carried groceries in one arm and their child in the other. Who would’ve matched her gray for gray. Wrinkled, soft, and still learning how to love each other better.

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