Page 164 of The Yoga Teacher

“I don’t expect you to take me back,” he said. “But if there’s a way to earn your respect again—not your forgiveness, not your love, just that—I’ll take it. I’ll take the long road. Even if it ends in nothing.”

Her throat ached. But she swallowed it down.

She looked around the room—herroom—before meeting his eyes again.

“I’m not offering you a path back to what we were. That version of us is gone.”

He looked down, swallowed. “I understand.”

“But I’m open to something else,” she said slowly. “Something new. If we build it with clear eyes.”

His eyes widened, something flashing across his face that she couldn't quite name—disbelief, maybe, or the kind of hope that cut you, the kind of hope that hurts. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“We’re going to date,” she said. “Like strangers. With rules.”

Something broke open in his expression—something like desperation, like relief. As if he'd been handed water after walking through desert for too long.

“Continued therapy. Complete transparency. No expectations.”

His lips parted, closed, parted again—a man trying to find language for something he never expected to be given. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough at the edges. “Yes. Yes to it all, yes to anything.”

Her voice dropped, barely above a whisper now.

“I’m not promising love. I’m not promising trust. All I’m offering is... a beginning.”

He looked at her like that was more than he’d dared to hope for. Something in his face cracked open—not happiness, not celebration, but a kind of reverence that made her suddenly aware of her own power. He didn't smile. He didn't reach for her. He just sat there, looking at her with eyes that held both wonder and fear, like a man who recognized that what she was offering wasn't mercy but a reckoning he might not survive.

But Hannah wasn’t doing this for him.

She was doing it for her.

Because she was strong now.

Because she was whole.

Because even after all the wreckage—especiallyafter the wreckage—shegot to decide what came next.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Daniel

HE WAS EARLY.

Not in the charming, casually-early way. Too early. Twenty minutes before the time she said. Twenty-five by the time she actually arrived.

He’d triple-checked the reservation. Chosen the place carefully—quiet, local, no history. Somewhereneutral. Somewhere new.

It was a little Italian spot with low lighting and mismatched chairs and fresh basil growing in terra cotta pots along the windows. Romantic enough to matter. Not enough to pressure.

His palms were sweating by the time he saw her.

And then she walked in.

Hair pulled back, that worn leather jacket he used to hang by the door, and a scarf he didn’t recognize—something soft, loose around her neck. Her lipstick wasn’t red or pink or anything intentional. Just the color of her. Her real self. No armor.

His breath caught.

She was beautiful.

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