Chapter 11
Willow’s mind was buzzing with delivery deadlines, production schedules, and last-minute logistic issues as she stepped into the elevator on Friday evening and pressed the button for the lobby.
She and Barb had worked overtime every day this week as the company tried to hit the retailer cutoff dates in the final sprint toward the holiday season.
It was a lot, but she enjoyed it. She liked the team in Operations and following a clear structure yet also adapting on the fly to any problems that came up. Luckily, her devices had been cooperating for the most part the last few days.
But now she also looked forward to the weekend. She was ready to unplug and leave all tech devices and the constant threat of impending malfunctions behind for at least forty-eight hours.
The only other person in the elevator—a red-haired guy in a suit—got off on the tenth floor and stepped past her with a polite nod.
Willow exhaled as the steel doors started to slide shut.
But before they could fully close, a hand darted through the narrowing gap. It wasn’t just any hand. Willow knew those strong fingers and that broad palm. Her heart immediately beat faster.
Scottie! Jesus, how much time had she spent watching her hands to recognize her by a glimpse of them? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question.
The doors slid open.
Scottie stood in front of her, blonde hair disheveled after a long workday, her messenger bag slung across a black hoodie that said Tech Wizard, with a robed cartoon figure waving a magic wand.
When their gazes met, Scottie paused. “Oh. Hey.” She crossed the threshold into the elevator more slowly than usual.
“Hi.” Willow moved toward the mirrored back wall to make space for Scottie. Her entire body prickled with awareness, even though Scottie followed elevator etiquette and kept a polite distance.
As the car started to descend, an awkward silence spread between them.
Willow opened her mouth to fill the quiet with small talk, then shut it again. If she asked what Scottie was doing tonight and this turned out to be the day of the company trivia event, that would make everything worse.
Maybe Scottie would even suggest again that she join them, and this time, Willow might not be able to resist the urge to find out what Scottie was like after hours.
But then again, Scottie probably wouldn’t ask a second time.
Willow’s “no” still seemed to hang between them like a wall.
Usually, Willow didn’t mind walls. They kept her secret safe.
Yet with Scottie, she kept poking holes into the concrete, curious to catch a glimpse behind it—or longing to let Scottie see pieces of her.
No. Don’t. You know it won’t end well.
They both kept their gazes straight ahead, watching the floor numbers above the door.
Seven, six—
The elevator jolted to an abrupt stop.
The lights went out, leaving them in total darkness.
Willow stumbled, thrown off-balance, and instinctively reached for the nearest support to stay upright. Her fingers closed around something warm and solid. That was definitely not the handrail.
Had Scottie moved closer—maybe stumbled too?
The dimmer emergency lights flickered on.
She was clutching Scottie’s forearm, holding on for dear life. At least she hadn’t zapped her this time, maybe because the long sleeves of Scottie’s hoodie had acted as an insulating layer. “Sorry.” Willow yanked her hand back.
She waited for the doors to ping open or the elevator to start moving again, but neither happened.
“Shit,” Scottie murmured. Even with all the computer issues she’d been summoned to fix, it was the first time Willow had heard her curse. “I think we’re stuck.”
“Yeah, I think so too.” Willow stared at the closed doors. Was this her fault? She had never before caused an entire elevator to get stuck, but maybe the stress this week, paired with all the conflicting feelings when she’d seen Scottie again had short-circuited something.
Scottie jabbed her finger at the open door button.
Nothing.
She pressed the button for the lobby.
The elevator didn’t move.
“Come on! Seriously?” Scottie frantically pressed the button for every single floor, but nothing happened. “Great. Why didn’t I take the stairs?”
“Because you work on the tenth floor,” Willow replied.
“There’s that.” Scottie banged on the door. Her breath came in quick bursts. “Hello? Can anyone hear us?”
Except for the sharp thumps of her fists, everything stayed silent.
“Most folks probably went home,” Willow said. “It’s way past quitting time.”
Scottie stopped her frantic pounding. She slid her fingertips to the crease between the doors and tried to pry them apart with her bare hands.
The metal didn’t give an inch.
What was going on with Scottie? She always seemed so unflappable at work, as if nothing could faze her. But now she was the one panicking.
Willow quickly crossed toward her and gripped her sleeve. “Stop. You’ll only end up hurting yourself. Modern elevator doors can only be opened from the outside, so unless you’ve been hiding a Supergirl outfit beneath your work shirt, you won’t be able to open them.”
Scottie stilled, then turned. A weak smile curved up one corner of her mouth. “You know what’s beneath my work shirt.”
“What?” Willow stared at her in the soft glow of the emergency lights. “Why would I—?”
“You slid my ID badge beneath my shirt. You’d have seen it if I wore a Supergirl outfit.”
Willow’s cheeks heated. Was Scottie flirting?
But it had been an absent-minded remark.
She was probably just trying to distract herself from their predicament.
“Just for the record, I didn’t peek.” Okay, not much.
She had noticed the bit of smooth skin the undone buttons had revealed.
But this wasn’t the time or place to think about it.
Scottie gave up her attempts to open the doors and instead pulled out her phone. “Damn. No service. You?”
Willow fished her phone from her purse and pressed the power button. The screen remained black. It happened so often that it no longer surprised her. “The battery is dead.” She dug deeper in her bag and pulled out her backup phone.
Scottie eyed the device as if Willow had just retrieved a stone tablet and a chisel. “Is that an old Nokia?”
“I’ll have you know it’s a classic.”
“Classic, right! That thing has physical buttons!” Scottie let out a chuckle, sounding less nervous now. “I had no idea they still exist outside of museums that display prehistoric artifacts.”
“Haha. You’ll stop making fun of my phone once I use it to call someone who can get us out of here.” But truth be told, Willow didn’t mind the teasing. At least the phone had distracted Scottie from her growing panic. She glanced at the small LCD display. “Crap. No signal either. What now?”
Scottie turned on the flashlight app on her phone and directed the beam toward the ceiling. “Look, there’s an emergency hatch. I could boost you up. Maybe you can reach the hatch and climb out.”
The thoughts of Scottie’s hands on her body, her strong fingers gripping her hips, made the temperature in the elevator seem to rise.
Willow shook her head to clear it. “Not a good idea. That’s how people end up falling to their death in elevator shafts.
Besides, I think it’s locked and can’t be opened from the inside anyway for exactly that reason.
The safest place for us to be is inside the elevator.
It only becomes dangerous if people try to get out by themselves. ”
Scottie slumped against the wall. “Damn.”
“You okay?” Willow moved a little closer to see her face in the dim light. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
“Not exactly. But I’m not too fond of small, confined spaces.”
“Really?” Willow wouldn’t have guessed that, and she marveled at the ease with which Scottie had confessed a weakness. She definitely didn’t have the kind of walls that Willow had erected all her life. “You’re in IT. Shouldn’t you be used to crawling into tight spaces?”
“I am. But climbing beneath a desk to fix a computer is not the same as being trapped in a steel box, dangling from a single cable five floors above the ground.”
“True,” Willow said. “But it’s actually more than a single cable. Elevators usually have at least four cables, often even eight. Each one could support the full weight by itself. There are lots of safety features, so don’t worry, okay?”
Scottie studied her. “Why are you so calm? And how come you know so much about elevators?”
Willow shrugged, trying to play it off. For her, this wasn’t new. While she’d never been trapped in an elevator before, she was always expecting things to go wrong. She no longer panicked when technology glitched. “I read a lot.”
“Like what? Elevator manuals?” Scottie asked with a faint grin.
Actually, yes. But she couldn’t tell Scottie that she’d read up on elevators because she’d wanted to be prepared, just in case. “Thrillers, romances, that kind of thing.”
“So in those books, how do the main characters usually get out of the stuck elevator?”
Willow could only remember two novels with a trapped-in-an-elevator scene.
Both had been sapphic romances. In those books, the characters hadn’t put much effort into getting out.
They had been too busy having hot sex with each other.
But, of course, there was no way she would tell Scottie that.
“They press the emergency button and wait for maintenance to rescue them. It still works, even if the power’s out.
” She turned toward the control panel, glad to have a reason to turn her back before Scottie saw her blushing and started asking questions about the fictional elevator scenarios.
It took a few seconds for her to find the emergency button at the bottom of the panel.
For a moment, she hesitated. Should she get Scottie to press it?