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The emergency button wasn’t glowing, but he’d already attempted to reach someone.
I pushed to my knees and pressed it just in case. Nothing happened. No buzz, no intercom, not even a red light like the rest of the ones above it.
Sighing, I sank back, ending up closer to Drake without meaning to.
Our shoulders brushed, but I didn’t pull away, needing to soak in his calming nature. It had been the jolt, the slam against his body, the surety of sudden danger and possible death that had freaked me the fuck out what seemed an hour earlier. There was no way it’d been that long though.
“Shouldn’t they be prying open the doors or something?” I asked, wondering what the hell was going on and why no one was trying to rescue us. “I mean, even if we’re between floors, they can do that, can’t they? Pretty sure I’ve seen shit like that on TV.”
“No fucking clue.” Drake stood and pounded on the door, giving me a nice view of his ass and how well he filled out his slacks. “Hey! Anyone out there?”
No one answered, but I wasn’t surprised, considering there hadn’t been an attempt to contact us.
I tore my focus off him, my mind launching into reasons for the complete lack of communication from the outside world.
“What if there’s a fire?” I whispered, my throat wanting to tighten.
“Alarms would be screaming.”
“What if time stood still, frozen by like…aliens or something?”
Drake chuckled and sat back beside me, his shoulder tight against mine. “Don’t let your imagination mess with your head. We’ll get out eventually. Just gotta be patient.”
Not easy to do with Drake Hemmings all up in my space.
I released a slow, steady exhale, ridding my lungs of the familiar scent of him. “How long have we been stuck in here?”
Drake shifted, lifting his right wrist to check his watch. The clean smell of soap wafted of him in a thicker cloud as more of our arms brushed together at his action. “A half hour.”
“We’re officially late for dinner.”
“Jacqueline is going to be pissed,” he said.
“It didn’t feel like we’d descended very far—what do you think? Tenth floor? Seventh?”
He shrugged, and I rubbed my palms down my thighs at the thought of being stuck so far off the ground. What if the cables suddenly snapped? What if we plummeted downward? Were we still high enough we would be smashed to death rather than landing in a heap of limbs?
My mind started to whirl, taking my pulse on a roller-coaster ride that bottomed my stomach out.
“Where do you live in Boston?” Drake asked as though he’d heard the beginnings of a spiral in my brain.
I appreciated him wanting to distract me even if I didn’t believe panic would truly be an issue again. “I have a condo downtown.”
“What? Me too!”
I already knew he did but didn’t admit that aloud.
“You could have called me,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine.
“I don’t have your new number,” I offered a lousy excuse.
“My dad does.”
“And Jacqueline has mine!” I shot back, unable to help myself or keep the hurt from my tone over how he’d moved on so easily. He’d changed his a handful of years earlier, and I’d gotten one with a Boston area code after becoming an official Massachusetts resident my second year of college.
We both shut down for a minute after that quick back-and-forth. With every second that passed, my need to shift, climb onto him, or escape to the opposite wall, intensified.
The internal draw toward Drake pulled and pushed with equal force, making my heart speed up once more. My pants became bit tighter again too.
