Page 45 of Take the Bait

She was quiet for a moment, and he reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. He knew she needed delicate handling—that behind all the blasé attitude about not knowing how to cook and self-deprecating jokes about her awkwardness, there was real self-consciousness.

He pulled into her driveway and put the car in park, turning to face Hanna.

“I just think…” a grim expression came over her face as tears overflowed. “I think we should just take a break for now.”

Tucker’s heart stuttered. “A break?”

He hadn’t expected this. He was falling for this girl, and she wanted a break?

He’d realized he needed to take a step back from work—she’dhelped him realize he needed more in his life than work, and now she wanted out.

“What does that mean, exactly?” He asked, his head roaring.

“I don’t know. I just need time.” Hanna wiped tears from her eyes. “To figure things out.”

“To figure out what, exactly?” Tucker asked, his voice dripping with the stunned sadness he couldn’t escape.

“I don’t know, Tucker,” Hanna said, her voice breaking. Then, more quietly, she added, “I don’t know.”

She grabbed her keys from his hand and pecked a kiss on his cheek. Still in shock, he didn’t move as she ran a hand through his hair, an almost wistful expression on her face.

“I’ll text you when I’m ready to talk,” she said, leaving the car without a backward glance.

Leaving Tucker wondering what exactly went wrong—and if he had any hope of fixing it.

13

Hanna avoided Tucker for the next three weeks, then headed home for the holidays.

He’d sent flowers—beautiful, purple azaleas she looked at every day when she made her coffee. But she couldn’t bring herself to text him.

She was floundering. Panicking. And she knew it.

But everything just got soreal. Painfully real—the kind of real she couldn’t deal with when she already had one foot out the door of Orange Beach. And she didn’t know how to handle that.

She’d never made it this far with new people before—and she couldn’t help but feel like all of her insides were outside her body. And instead of learning how to deal with it—instead of finding whatever bravery had led her to loudly burping on a first date with a loser—she ran.

Hanna couldn’t stop replaying the day she met Tucker’s family and friends in her head. Despite her oddities, they accepted her, and maybe even because of them. She wanted to crawl out of her skin every time she thought back to meeting them.

But the biggest feeling that kept ricocheting around inside her? Unworthiness.

Tucker was everything she wasn’t. Ambitious and successful. Friendly and kind—that man never met a stranger. Gentle in all the right ways. Rough in all the right ways, too. Easy on the eyes.

And she was just… awkward. Funny, to the right person. Kind, when she could be. It’s why she worked with kids. She didn’t have to be anything around them but herself, and even with all her weirdness, they still listened to her. Still adored her, save for that pesky Bradley.

Hanna had been telling herself she’d see the school year through before deciding whether or not to call it quits. She wouldn’t leave her students in the middle of the year. Couldn’t leave her colleagues in a bad place just because she was lonely.

She sighed and rolled over on the couch, a Christmas episode of “Friends” playing while she pretended to pay attention to it.

“Are we gonna talk about it, or what?” Madi asked, crossing her arms, her feet dangling over Bella’s lap.

“I mean, we can,” Hanna responded, sitting up, brows crinkled in confusion. “But we’ve seen this episode, like, I dunno—fifty times? What’s there to discuss?”

One year, when they were in middle school, they watched all the Christmas episodes of “Friends” on Christmas Eve. It had become a tradition that had stuck. Hanna was pretty sure she could recite “The One With The Holiday Armadillo” from scratch.

“Not that, you idiot,” Madi released an exasperated sigh. “You!”

“Me?”

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