Page 42 of Knockout (Whiskey Dolls 2)

Man, I really did have the best friends ever. I let out a little laugh, my chest feeling so much lighter than it should have for a woman whose long-time crush ghosted her the night of their first date. “It’s okay, seriously. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really want to go.”

I was met with silence through the line for a beat until her voice returned, a smile clear as day in her words. “Maybe that’s because you now have the hots for the sexy jerk who lives right above you.”

Damn it. “Shut up,” I grumbled. It was all I could say, really. It wasn’t like I could deny it. They knew the truth before I was willing to admit it to myself. My friends had been giving me crap since our date, the pains-in-my-ass knowing me too damn well.

She let out a giggle, knowing she was right, but thankfully let it go. “Okay, okay. Tell you what. I’ll call some of the other girls, and we can make a ladies’ night out of it. How’s that sound?”

A smile pulled at my lips, and for the first time since Bax asked me outdaysago, I was actually excited to be heading to the park. And funny enough, it was because hewouldn’tbe there.

Who in the hell could have seen that one coming?

My friends and Jude’s gram, apparently. The know-it-alls.

* * *

Jude

I hadn’t been able to sit still all goddamn night. To keep myself busy, I cleaned my apartment top to bottom. I arranged all the books on my shelves by color, then remembered I wasn’t a major tool and reorganized them again by author instead. I even went through my closet, throwing out all the flannel shirts that had seen better days, the ones with holes or tears in them—which was more than half of them. Then I went through my fridge, throwing out the spoiled contents, and quickly realized I was in dire need of a trip to the grocery store.

I paced back and forth from one task to the next, making sure my footsteps were heavy enough to thump into the apartment below, hoping that, if she was down there, the noise would send her storming up here, full of that fire that stirred my blood every time I saw it spark in those enthralling gray eyes. Of course, that didn’t happen.

I’d been listening for her to return home for hours, even going so far as to spread out on the living room floor, going through a series of push-ups and sit-ups just so I had a legitimate excuse to get my ear as close to the floor as humanly possible. I ended up doing so many that my abs were screaming and my arms were as limp as wet noodles.

The later it got, the more my mind started turning to what that could possibly mean. Did she have a better time with him than she had with me? Had that fuckface douche-weasel kissed her? Did she go home with him?

That last thought turned my blood to ice, the frigid crystals pricking and scraping the inside of my veins, searching for some sort of relief from the tension coiling in every single one of my muscles. If that was really what happened, if they’d hit it off so well that she went back to his place after their date—Jesus, eventhinkingthat word left an acidic taste in my mouth—I was going to lose my mind. And the shittiest part of the whole fucking thing was that I didn’t have anyone but myself to blame. I’d all but physically shoved her right into the prick’s arms.

This whole thing was my fault, and that knowledge spurred me on. I upped the pace of my workout, turning it into a self-imposed torture session, pushing myself up and lowering back down at a breakneck speed until my biceps and triceps actually began to burn.

I was dangerously close to collapsing in exhaustion when I finally heard Layla’s door opening and closing beneath me, then a second later, music began filtering up through the floor.

I pushed into a plank before jumping to my feet and shook the feeling back into my arms as I looked at the time on my microwave. Just after 11:00. That was kind of late to be coming back from a first date, right?

Hell yeah it is,an angry voice inside my head growled.Way too damn late.Nothing good happens after 10:00.

I was pretty sure the saying my gram used when I was growing up was that nothing good happened aftermidnight, but I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind at the moment, so I twisted the saying to fit my deteriorating mood, justifying the rightness I was feeling just then. Seemed like pretty sound logic to me.

Adrenaline flooded through me as I bolted out my door, taking the stairs down to Layla’s apartment two at a time instead of waiting for the slow-ass elevator to do its one and only fucking job. As soon as I had the chance, I was writing a complaint letter to building management about that damn thing. But that was for another time. For now, I had something else I needed to focus on.

My blood was pumping so hard as I stopped in front of her apartment door and began beating my knuckles on the white painted wood, that I could barely hear anything over the rush of it in my ears.

When my knock went unanswered five seconds later, I pounded again, this time even harder, so hard I worried I might split the skin on my knuckles clean open.

“Jeez, I’m coming!” I heard shouted from the other side. “Relax, would y—” The words died on Layla’s lips as she whipped the door open and saw me standing on the other side. “Jude? What the hell?” she snapped, but I was too busy seeing red to acknowledge the stunned annoyance in her tone. “Why are you panting like you’re out of breath?”

Because I’d just raced from my apartment to hers at a dead sprint. But I couldn’t manage to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth in order to answer. I was too focused onher.She was clasping a sweater in front of her chest in an effort to hide the fact that all she had on was a skintight flesh-toned spaghetti strap shirt that left absolutelynothingto the imagination. Not...one...goddamn...thing. Like she’d been in the middle of stripping down forsomeonewhen I interrupted. It was official. I was going to fucking kill that guy!

“What are you doing here?” she asked, those gray eyes wide.

“Where is he?” I seethed, shouldering past her and into the apartment without an invitation.

“Where’s who?” she squeaked as my eyes scanned the apartment. “And excuse me, I didn’t invite you in!”

“Like you don’t know who,” I bit sourly, then shouted, “Baxter!”

“Jude, stop. There’s no 0ne—”

“Get your ass out here!” I continued to bellow. “I’m gonna rip your spine out through your asshole, you manscaping shit-for-brains.”

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