Chapter 3 Liam
Liam
What the hell was happening outside the elevator? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good.
A frantic, metallic sound like shrapnel echoed through the car park. Footsteps hurrying. A grunt. Then another.
“Get back here, you feral little twat!”
Hopefully, that wasn’t directed at me.
I had not been feral today. Not yet.
The scuffling continued.
“Ouch. Fuck. You utter bastard.”
This person was not having a good day.
I leaned to the side, trying to get a glimpse of the chaos. Did I need to call security?
Maybe a priest?
A woman shot upright beside a blue Mini, some sort of white card held overhead in victory, like the Terminator before it sank into lava.
Her hair was frazzled, knees black with dirt.
From the looks of her, her morning might have actually been worse than the T-800’s. At least Arnie wasn’t wearing heels.
I watched for a second as she hooked the white card around her neck on its lanyard and jerked her head toward the lift.
For a split second, our eyes met. Hers widened instantly. I whipped back inside so fast my shoulder hit the wall.
A rapid patter of feet. I braced my trainer against the doors to stop them from closing.
The woman launched herself into the lift, stopping abruptly beside me.
I had the sense that if she didn’t lean against something soon, she might fall over.
Her bag hung open, her entire life trying to spill out, her chest rising and falling in a way that was rather distracting.
I fixed my eyes firmly on the panel in front—this woman needed a chair and a cup of tea, not someone trying to drag their eyes away from her low-cut top.
She pushed the button for the ground floor, and the doors closed.
“Thank you,” she muttered. “That was … kind.”
Just then, something in her bag lit up, followed by a loud, upbeat American voice.
“You’re welcome, Andrea. Yeah, so—just to be clear? What you’re describing isn’t actually kind. It’s more like a maladaptive caretaking pattern rooted in anxious attachment. If you want, I can explain that a bit more?”
Did she have her therapist on speed dial? It didn’t seem like the optimal time for a consult, to be honest.
Her head snapped down to her bag. “Oh my God. What—?”
The voice boomed brighter, seemingly delighted.
“Yeah, I totally get that. It’s really hard to notice our own patterns sometimes, right?
But just so you know, that doesn’t make you broken, Andrea.
It makes you human. Would you like me to create a list of behaviors to look out for, so you can work on them? ”
She plunged a hand into the bag and began digging. “Oh no—”
“Well, yeah, actually,” the voice continued, too smooth, too confident.
“And calling those patterns ‘kind’ is a cognitive distortion. What you’re describing is more like boundary erosion mixed with hyper-responsibility, which we chatted about earlier.
I can unpack that with you now. Just say the word. ”
The woman squeaked, her bag rustling as she pulled and pushed at the contents. If I could have closed my ears, I would have, but they remained there, open, rudely intruding into her private life.
“But great news. These repetitive behavioral loops, driven by low self-worth and conflict avoidance, are highly treatable. This is fantastic progress. If you like, I can—”
“Oh my God! Shut up. Shut up—”
Her palms pressed down over the speaker, and the phone crackled, then chirped back, muffled but relentlessly perky. “Absolutely, Andrea. I’ll go quiet now.”
A beat.
“Whenever you’re ready to keep exploring those attachment patterns, just say ‘Hey, Voice Chat’ and I’ll be here to support you.”
Another horrible, eager little chirp. “You’re doing so great.”
The bag wriggled faintly under her hands like it wanted to add more.
“Chat later if you’d like.”
She finally managed to smother the phone with both hands, and the bag went quiet. In my peripheral vision, I could see her, eyes glued to the floor, breathing hard through her nose.
I nodded calmly, as though motivational ambushes from handbags were a daily occurrence.
“And I thought my father was judgmental,” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead.
Silence.
When I glanced down to my right, she was staring at me, mouth open—was that shock? Fury? Then she started to laugh.
Thank God.
“Oh. You heard that then?” She straightened her mouth, suddenly serious.
“Heard what?” I turned back to her. God, she was gorgeous. Not a lot of women could get away with hair like that—half fallen out of whatever she’d tried to do with it this morning, sticking up at odd angles like it was trying to escape. She looked like she’d been in a fight with a hedge. And lost.
“Nothing,” she said. Her eyes stayed on mine a fraction too long before she turned back to face front.
I looked at the doors again, pretending to study the graffiti. Apparently, she was doing the same.
“Good,” I replied. “Glad we cleared that up.”
“Cleared what up?”
“Exactly.”
We were both now staring at a very large, very detailed penis scrawled on the metal in black marker.
Probably not the moment to mention it.
“I don’t have low self-worth, by the way,” she said. “I was just … exploring a few ideas.”
“Of course.”
The lift eased into a downward glide. “If it helps,” I said, “I’d hate to imagine what my phone would say about me if it had the confidence yours does.”
She exhaled sharply—another laugh or a warning, hard to tell.
I kept my head still but let my eyes slip sideways. She was still looking at the doors, lips tight. She smoothed her hair, then tugged at her dress from behind, and the neckline jumped up a solid inch.
My eyes snapped forward.
Fuck. Did she think I was trying to look?
I shifted a fraction to the left.
Pixel something. That was what her access card said. A creative outfit, judging by the clothes. Dress code clearly optional.
The lift gave a sudden judder, like it was going to stop, but then changed its mind.
She swayed sideways, lanyard swinging, and my hand shot out automatically, catching her elbow with two fingers.
“Oh God, sorry.” She straightened herself and tucked her hair behind an ear, but it pinged out again like an unruly spring.
“All good. They do that sometimes,” I said, like I knew how lifts worked.
She nodded, politely ignoring my newfound expertise in vertical transport. Her arm stayed close to her side, bag clamped under it.
I dropped my hand and shifted my weight back to the center. Best to stop talking altogether.
The lift continued its slow, uneven descent.
Then it stopped. Hard.
The lights flickered—a single blink, but enough to make her inhale.
Before either of us could speak, the lift lurched upward.
“What—is it going up?” she said.
It certainly felt that way.
The doors slid open again.
Level six. Exactly where we’d started.
The speaker crackled overhead. “A technical fault has been detected. Please wait for assistance.”
“Oh no.” She looked at me. Clearly, she’d bought the lift guru thing.
I glanced out at the hallway, then back at her. “We should get out. I’m not getting confident vibes from this thing.”
She nodded and stepped forward, but the doors slid shut in our faces.
“What—?” She lunged for the panel, but the lift had already jolted downward.
I braced a hand on the rail. “Looks like we missed our escape window.”
“No kidding.”
“At least we’re still going down,” I said.
“There is that.”
“… wait for assist—” said the speaker again, weaker this time.
“I’m just grateful this one hasn’t offered any therapy tips yet,” I added.
She snorted. “Good point.”
“… wait,” the speaker replied in its dying radio voice, “for ass.”
She turned to me and grimaced. “Did it just say wait for ass?”
I coughed lightly. “I believe so. Although not sure that counts as therapy.”
She nodded again. “It could be a tip, though. Technically.”
“It could?”
“To wait.”
Did she just say—
“… for ass,” the speaker confirmed.
“Not exactly a first date sort of thing,” she said quickly. “I mean, not that I—I just saw something. Online. Once.”
Jesus Christ.
The lift hummed, the speaker giving one last dying effort.
“… ass—”
We kept our eyes on the artistic penis in front of us.
“For what it’s worth, I’m imagining a donkey,” I said.
Her head jerked toward me. “You’re what?”
“You know, the other sort of …”
“… ass—” croaked the lift.
“Oh right,” she said. “Ass. Like a donkey. Not an actual …”
“No.” I winced.
We both stood very still.
“Very gentlemanly of you,” she added.
“Thank you.”
Before I could say anything else, the cabin jolted under our feet and locked in place. Then the lights went out. Blackness.
“It’s fine,” I said quickly. A bold promise, considering I couldn’t see my own hand. “It’s probably just … resetting.”
“Lifts don’t usually do that, do they?” she said.
“No,” I said. “They don’t.”
I lifted a hand cautiously in front of me, trying to find the emergency panel, but brushed against nothing but cold air.
Then—
A grinding. Gears on metal.
“Shit,” she whispered.
The floor gave a twitch beneath us, as if something was unclipping itself above.
“Hey—it’s fine. It’s still … holding,” I said.
Christ, that sounded unconvincing even to me.
Another tremor ran through the metal beneath our feet. She stepped slightly toward the sound of my voice, enough that I felt the warmth of her shoulder along my arm.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right.” My voice came out lower than I’d intended—too serious, like it might not be all right at all.
I found the intercom button by feel and pressed it.
A soft tone sounded, and a faint emergency strip blinked to life along the skirting.
Her face appeared in the dark—wide eyes looking at me.
The lift shuddered again, harder. Something clanged above us. Fuck.
“We should probably sit.” I pulled off my black hoodie and threw it down. “Is this okay?” I pointed at my top. “Better than sitting on the grime.”
“Yeah … okay. Thanks.”
The cables shrieked, then stopped again.
She hesitated, then folded down next to me onto the soft fabric.
The floor was cold and slightly gritty, and she rubbed her bare legs.
I wanted to put an arm around her, but we’d just met. Definitely inappropriate.
There was a tremendous shuddering, and the elevator lurched, dropping one, maybe two inches, enough to make us both catch our breath. A low, grinding vibration started—short, uneven pulses that traveled up through the floor and into my spine.
Not good.
I leaned toward her. “Andrea?”
“How do you know my—oh yeah.” She looked down. “My handbag therapist.”
“Listen,” I said quietly. “These things don’t just fall. They’ve got six different safety mechanisms that’d have to all fail at once.”
“Right,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I knew that.”
“Of course,” I said. “So you’d have to work hard to make one of these things actually drop.”
Another metallic twitch shuddered through the cabin.
She flinched. “That sounds like it’s working hard.”
Fair point.
A sharper vibration rattled the skirting. I didn’t like the pattern.
“We might want to lie down,” I said. “Would that be too weird?”
“Lie flat? Like—on the floor?”
“It’s just precautionary,” I said. “Like putting a seat belt on before the plane takes off. Doesn’t mean anything bad is happening.”
She nodded, but her hands were trembling.
Another judder, louder this time. It sounded like it was right above us.
I reached for her arm. “Let’s lie down,” I said. If we were flat, we had the best chance of avoiding injury. Even better if she had some cushioning. The hoodie wasn’t going to cut it …
“I—” Her voice was canceled out by a scream of metal from above. We were out of time.
I pushed my arm between her back and the cold steel of the elevator wall just as the lift gave a terrible, decisive snap.
In a split second, I’d pulled her on top of me.
The thin fabric of her dress bunched under my right arm, and her head dropped onto my shoulder.
Her entire body was on top of mine, her mouth hot against my neck.
We were falling.
She gasped, her fingers fisting in the fabric of my T-shirt.
I cradled the back of her head so she didn’t hit the panel, both arms wrapped around her.
Then the weightlessness became less like floating and more like being pulled down, the pressure building.
The air felt thicker, as if the lift was about to jerk back to reality.
The second stretched like an hour.
And then, with a bone-deep jolt, we slammed to a stop.
Pain shot through my back, but I didn’t let go. She was pressed fully against me, rigid, her face tucked beneath my jaw like she was trying to disappear.
Neither of us moved.
It was silent again.
Very slowly, she lifted her head, her nose brushing my collarbone.
“Is … is it done?” she whispered.
“I hope so,” I said. “I’m running out of vertebrae to crush.”
A shaky laugh escaped her. Now that we weren’t falling to our deaths, I became vividly aware of where her legs were. And her hands. And that my hand was still around her waist.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “You?”
“Ask me again when you’re not lying on top of me,” I said. “I might have a different answer.”
I’d pulled her close to protect her. That had been instinct.
I should probably let go now, but for some reason, I wasn’t ready to.