Chapter one
Aubrey
Fuck it.
~ End of November ~
I’m in love with Shane Jefferson.
I know it sounds crazy. How can I be in love with a man I barely know? But it’s the truth.
I love him.
I stare down at my latest Instagram post, a simple picture of me and Octavia, one of the employees here at One Sweet Tooth at a Time, the bakery I manage. We’re posing in front of a freshbatch of gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, the newest addition to our holiday menu. All my friends and most of my followers have liked the picture, but they aren’t the ones who have my attention. No, that would be the latest like I received ten minutes ago…
From Shane.
I read his name over and over as goosebumps scatter all over my arms, down my back, heating my core. Just seeing his name gets a reaction out of me—imagine when I actually talk to him in person.God, I turn into a gibbering, nervous mess.
He’s always had this effect on me, one I can’t explain, one I’ve never felt before.
I’ve never really paid much attention to boys, and I wish I could say it was because I was too focused on my studies or something like that, but that’s not the case. I just didn’t have any interest in them. I didn’t think about if so-and-so had a crush on me, I didn’t think about holding their hand or kissing them, and I’ve definitely never thought about intercourse with any of them.
If I’m being honest with myself, I thought some part of me was broken. Growing up, all my friends had crushes on boys then they would date them, and eventually become intimate with them. But I never wanted that. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t want it; there was nothing really holding me back, I just didn’t care for it.
Which is why I’m now a recently turned twenty-four-year-old virgin. A virgin who’s never even been kissed.
But Shane, Shane woke that broken part of me. All it took was one look and something stirred inside of me. Like a cozy little creature waking up from hibernation after being dormant all through the winter.
I still remember the first day I met him, almost four years ago at one of my best friends’ wedding. Cecilia was getting marriedto Silas Hayes, the star centerman for the New York Griffins. The team that Shane happens to be the head coach of.
His eyes fell to mine when she introduced us. The way they seemed to penetrate my skin lit it on fire. I remember the way he took my palm in his rough one. The way he brought it up to his mouth and pressed his pillowy lips to the back of my hand, right before he said my name like it was a well-preserved secret. His voice was a warm featherlike caress all over my body.
I can still feel the way my knees grew weak, the way my heart skipped a beat. The way this feeling I had never felt before started blooming within me and spreading wildly. Our interaction didn’t go further than that, but it didn’t stop us from stealing glances at each other throughout the night.
The next time I talked to Shane was at Cecilia’s baby shower for her son Dante. I had seen Shane a few times whenever I went to the Griffins’ home games, but it was only a little peek while he was standing behind the bench, leading his team. But at the baby shower, we were practically forced into a conversation by Cecilia and her mother-in-law, Mira. And it was a disaster.
I found out that Shane had a sweet tooth, and I’m a baker, so naturally it should have been an easy conversation. But no. Instead, I went on to rambling every single ingredient in all the baked goods I had made for the shower. I didn’t even let him get a word in, and when I finally forced myself to shut up, he was just staring at me like I had two heads.
It wasmortifying.
From that moment, I tried to avoid him as much as possible. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even form a proper sentence around him anymore. Not until Cecilia’s accident a few months later, when all our family and friends, including the team, regrouped at the hospital and waited for news about her and Dante’s condition.
Shane had come up to me while I was seated in a corner with tears in my eyes. He sat down and wrapped his arms around me like a perfect warm blanket on a cold winter night. His hand glided through my hair, the other rubbing smoothly up and down my back. I laid my head against his chest and listened to his rapid heartbeat as he repeated that everything would be okay in a hushed voice.
My friends always tease me about him, asking me when I’ll admit to my feelings and do something about them. It only got worse when I received a Christmas gift from him last year at my parents’ home while my brother and his now fiancée, Emma, another one of my best friends, were there.
It was a beautifully wrapped box that looked like a candy cane, a big gold bow on the top. Inside the box was a recipe book from a world-renowned pastry chef, but that wasn’t the main gift.
Inside the front cover of the book was a ticket for a special baking class hosted in New York by one of the world’s best pastry chefs, one that only happens once every few years. I had tried to buy a ticket when they went on sale a year beforehand, but all ten spots were already sold out within minutes.
At the bottom of the box laid a little white index card with a note written,“A special gift for a wonderful baker. Merry Christmas xx – SJ”. I had to hide the giddiness seeping through my veins that desperately wanted to burst free.
It was months later that we had our next interaction, and once again, it was excruciatingly embarrassing. The day following the baking class, I wanted to thank him with some of the things we made. Except once I was at his office, I couldn’t work up the nerve to actually knock on his door.
Thankfully, or not so thankfully, he took over by swinging it open just as I was about to leave. I thrusted the plate of goods toward him, and when he reached for it, his hand brushed mine and I lost all my cool. I dropped the plate to the floor before hecould catch it and ruined everything on it, then I apologized and ran away without even helping him.
Honestly, every encounter from there just got worse and worse. Well, not every single one, but most. There was that time Julian forced me to dance with him at the charity gala back in May. Shane had come over to save me from his friend, even though Julian had admitted to only asking me to dance to mess with Shane a bit.
