Always Been Yours (Sticks and Stilettos #4)

1. Aubrey

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 fresh batch 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 married to 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 was mortifying.

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 he could 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.

Shane practically pushed Julian out of the way and grabbed me, continuing the dance I was in the middle of.

We didn’t say much, only held each other awkwardly until the end of the song, like we were afraid we’d get caught doing something inappropriate.

Then he thanked me for the dance and guided me back to my friends with his hand on my lower back, sending tingles all throughout my body.

Oh, there was also the time he caught me and Veronica Masters, my closest friend and old roommate, dancing together in a bit of a suggestive way.

When I noticed him and all the other guys looking, I shouted his name.

And instead of being a normal human who can start a perfectly normal conversation with the man who awakens every cell in her body, all I said was, “your hair”, because it was different than how I was used to seeing it.

Like I said, embarrassing.

But our last two interactions were different. Our first real conversation happened at the end of July, just four months ago while we were all gathered at Morgan Burkley’s house, another one of my close friends.

It was pretty late into the evening, and we were all hanging outside by the fire. Shane appeared at my side with a throw blanket and wrapped it around my body, saying he didn’t want me to catch a cold with the little cool breeze we were getting.

He then sat down beside me and asked if I was all right. At the time, we were going through a pretty scary situation with Ronnie’s criminal ex stalking and threatening us, to the point where we each needed to have bodyguards following us around.

Shane had offered to let me stay at his home so I wouldn’t be alone in my condo. Of course, I didn’t have a choice but to refuse, even though every atom in my body was screaming for me to say yes.

That’s also the same night I found out the girls, specifically Ronnie and Emma, had sent Shane bathing suit pictures of me during our vacation in Fiji and that he kept them all in a separate folder called ‘My Angel’.

They were nice pictures, I’ll admit to that, but it was still humiliating to me because I would never have done such a thing.

It was also the first time his touch felt more intimate. When he got up and wished me goodnight, his fingers skimmed over my bare knee like he couldn’t help himself. It rattled my bones, boiled the blood streaming through my veins, and lit my skin on fire.

The last time I talked to Shane was last month, when we were all in the hospital waiting for news on Noah’s condition after an incident with Ronnie’s ex.

He stayed by my side most of our time there and even went out to get me coffee without asking if I wanted one.

It was a simple act of kindness, but it warmed my heart in the very best way.

I saw him one more time a few days later, but we didn’t talk, so I don’t really count that in.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m not dating the man who haunts my every fantasy, who seems as smitten with me as I am with him.

Here’s the thing, our story is complicated.

Want to know why? Remember I mentioned my older brother earlier?

Well, Greyson’s a professional hockey player.

And the team he plays for? The New York Griffins.

Which only means one thing: Shane is his boss.