Our feud was known far and wide throughout the building, and our neighbors had been divided into two distinct columns: those who found our antics hilarious, and those who were terrified of both of us.
I was usually a pretty well-liked person. I went out of my way to be nice and had a lot of friends. I was generally known to be pleasant and friendly. I was a freaking blast to be around, for Christ’s sake, so the reputation I’d garnered in the building was all that jackass’s fault. He brought out the absolute worst in me.
Fortunately, it had been a week since my last run-in with Satan’s offspring, so I was in a pretty damn good mood. That was, until I stepped into the building’s laundry room and saw my clothes that should have still been in the washer with about five minutes left on the timer, sitting in a pile on top of the long built-in table along the back wall.
“What the hell?” I muttered as I stomped over. Fisting the pile of clothes, I lifted it up and immediately let them drop back down with a soggy thwap. “What the hell?” My clothes were drenched, soapy water pooling beneath them and dripping onto the floor.
I turned a full circle in the empty laundry room like I’d find the answer to what had happened just by staring at the white cinderblock walls. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t need to, because a few seconds later my archenemy and the bane of my existence came waltzing in with that cool, confident swagger of his that I absolutely detested.
Jude stopped as soon as he saw me, that ever-present smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth and setting my blood to a full boil. Damn it, I really hated how hot he was. It was like God was sticking it to me by making my adversary a walking wet dream. It really wasn’t fair.
I hated how his dark hair always shined beneath the lights, reminding me of rich, melted chocolate, and how perfectly mussed it always was. The sides were clipped short to his scalp, but the top was longer and always looked like he’d rolled out of bed, dragged his fingers through it, and headed out to start his day. And damn it, it looked good.
I hated how his strong, square jawline was always coated in the perfect amount of stubble, making him look incredibly appealing instead of sloppy. I hated the straight, masculine line of his nose and his thick, expressive eyebrows. And it was just plain freaking wrong for a man to have lashes as full and long as his. I hated that they rimmed a pair of inky blue eyes that reminded me of moonlight shining down on a dark, turbulent sea.
I hated how flipping tall he was and that nearly every inch of him was stacked with muscle, how, even though, at 5’7”—and that was without heels—he still somehow managed to tower over me and make me feel positively tiny. But what I hated most of all was that he had to be, hands down, the sexiest man I’d ever laid eyes on. The fact that I felt a little tingle in my lady parts for a man I despised more than a no-carb diet—carbohydrates were life—pissed me off like nothing else on the planet possibly could.
He looked me up and down in that dismissive way that made me want to claw his beautiful eyes out of his skull “Ah. I was wondering why the birds had stopped singing and the sound of children’s laughter disappeared. Now I know it’s because you managed to slither out of your hole.”
Murder is illegal, Layla. Murder is illegal, I chanted in my head. It was a reminder I had to give myself every time I was in his presence. Narrowing my eyes into vicious slits, I willed fire to shoot from my glare and melt his face off. “If the children stopped laughing, it’s because Hell spit you out, and now they’re terrified you’re going to feed on their souls.”
He arched an arrogant brow. “There’s only one soul-sucking demon in this room, and it isn’t me.”
“Calling you a demon would give you too much power. You’re like . . . a leech. Or one of those bottom-feeder sucker fish that cling to the bigger ones because they’re incapable of taking care of themselves.”
He let out a scoff and shook his head, moving across the room to my washing machine and dropped a basket of clothes on top of it. “I knew it!” I snapped, slapping my hand on the table. “You stole my washing machine, you son of a bitch!”
The look he gave me over his shoulder was full of lazy indifference. “Pretty sure the machines are owned by the building.”
It was a wonder steam didn’t pour out of my ears. “You know what I mean.” I grabbed a handful of drenched fabric and waved it around, sending water flying in an arch. “You took my clothes out of the washer before they were done!”
“No. I took out the clothes that were done and holding up the machine.”
I clenched my hands into fists to keep from lunging. “The washer was not done,” I clipped through gritted teeth as I lifted my phone and shoved it in his face just as the alarm started going off. “I sent a timer, jackass. And my clothes are drenched, so I know you took them out before they were finished.”
“Huh.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “My mistake then.”
“Give me back my washing machine, you shithead!” I charged at him, shoving him out of the way and throwing the lid to the machine open.
“Hey, back off!” He barreled into my side, sending me stumbling, and slammed the lid closed again. “My clothes are in there.”
I threw myself into him like a linebacker would, using my shoulder to try and force him back. “My clothes were in there first!” I grunted, my shoes squeaking as my feet slipped across the floor but didn’t gain a freaking inch. The stupid bastard was impossible to move. It was like trying to shove a brick wall.
“Are you serious right now?” he scoffed. “You’re such a shrimp, princess.”
I stood upright and blew the hair out of my face that had fallen from my messy ponytail. “Stop calling me that!” I cried, stomping my foot. I really hated the nickname he’d christened me with on that very first day, and he knew it. That was why he used it all the damn time.
“If the shoe fits, princess.”
“Gah! I hate you so much.” With one last glower in his direction, I stomped back over to my clothes and carried them to a different machine. Because of course there were a million other washers available. Jude just had to take mine to screw with me.
“Uh oh,” a voice spoke from the entrance of the laundry room as I finished dumping detergent into the second machine. “We didn’t just walk into the middle of World War III, did we?”
I turned to glance over my shoulder, offering Sarah and Clark from the third floor my biggest, brightest smile. “No, of course not. Everything’s perfectly fine,” I lied, but I was determined to repair my image in the eyes of the people in the building. I was nice, damn it! And I was going to make them see that, even if I had to lie through my freaking teeth.
Their attention darted from me to Jude who was casually leaning against the stolen washer, now messing around on his phone. It was obvious they didn’t believe me.
Clark pinched the sleeve of Sarah’s shirt and took a step back. “Maybe we should come back another time.”
The ridiculous smile I was wearing was so big it made my cheeks ache. “Don’t be silly. You’re fine. Come on in. There’s nothing to worry about. Right, Jude?”
His only response was to grunt as he swiped his thumb across his phone. The jerk didn’t even bother to take his eyes off the screen to acknowledge the people in the room with him.