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His big hands settled in the crease of the doors, and he tugged with a grunt, but they wouldn’t budge. Then he banged on them with two giant fists. “Hey!” he yelled. “Anyone out there? We’re stuck in here.”
I closed my eyes when he pressed his ear against the door, trying to listen for a response.
He did it again, his deep voice filling the tiny space.
Nothing.
A few more bangs on the door and another shout for help yielded similar results.
The hotel elevators were tucked around a corner from the front desk, the architecture of the building allowing for multiple elevators in multiple areas. It was entirely possible that no one knew we were in here yet.
He slid his hands over the panel, looking for … something. Then he set his hands on his trim hips and stared up at the ceiling of the elevator. “If I can get this open, how do you feel about climbing out?”
A slew of movie clips raced through my head, various images of elevators crashing onto the floor in a messy explosion of glass and metal. “Not particularly excited,” I admitted. “They’ll send help eventually, right?”
He sighed, and the light caught the edge of his jaw as he scrubbed at it with a big hand. “Sure hope so.”
“I’m trying very hard not to freak out right now,” I said, my voice deadly calm.
That was always the sign, wasn’t it?
The worse things were, the more panicked I felt, the more still I managed to become. Everything crystallized, like ice climbing up a wall, and if someone applied just a bit too much pressure, I’d shatter into a million pieces.
The man went still, staring down at where I huddled in the corner, my knees against my chest and arms wrapped around my legs.
He blew out a slow breath, easing his long body down to sit in the corner opposite me. What could he make out in that dim light?
What did I look like to him?
It was an immediate reaction to reach my hand up and smooth it over my ponytail.
When I didn’t find any stray hairs, I settled my arms back around my legs and set my chin on my knees while he studied me.
“Claustrophobic?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just have your average aversion to being stuck in a giant metal tube suspended a few floors over the ground.”
He laughed under his breath. “Yeah, same.”
We lapsed into silence again, but it was too quiet. The kind of quiet that allowed for loud thoughts and louder fears. The spiraling kinds of thoughts that made it hard to breathe.
My dad was going to lose his mind.
My pulse hammered in my ears, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes, and I tightened the grip on my legs.
I’d seen myself in that wedding dress, looking exactly like my mom, and every instinct inside me screamed that I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.
There was no decorum, none of the etiquette I’d had drilled into me my entire life, no adult conversation about why Ethan and I shouldn’t get married and we deserved better than a glorified arranged marriage.
I gasped, I can’t do this.
Caroline, just as invested in our match as my own dad was, simply waved it off and told me I’d be just fine once it was done.
Once it was done.
I didn’t want to look at my impending nuptials as something to check off a list. A transaction to be completed, where the lifelong ramifications shouldn’t be processed until after it was completed, until names were signed and contracts were filed.
I always did what I was told.
