Page 31 of Let the Games Begin
“I was actually nine,” she said with a nod. “Oh, and obviously I’ll make sure to give away all the money before I die, because nobody actually needs to be a billionaire.”
“But you want to be one?” he asked.
“Just to prove I can,” she said, shrugging. “Are billionairesunethical? Yes. Does that stop me from wanting to make thatForbeslist? No.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“Thank you,” she said, putting her hand to her heart. “And you, what’s the grand plan?”
“Just vague world domination, you know?” he said.
“I do know,” she said with a smile.
“Have we moved?” he asked, suddenly noticing the stillness around them. It definitely didn’t take this long for a lift to go down seven floors. Olivia pressed the ground-floor button again, but the lift didn’t move. Zeke pressed the open-doors button, but the doors didn’t shift. Olivia pressed the buttons for floors 1, 2, and 3, but nothing happened. Zeke went back and did the same, but their lift stayed completely stationary.
Zeke went to the lift doors to try, and fail, to pull them apart. He knocked on the doors and crouched on the floor to yell for help, but there was no response.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get us out,” Zeke said as he turned around. But Olivia was already speaking to the lift technician through an intercom on the wall.
“How did you do that?” Zeke asked in surprise.
“I took a course on elevator escapes,” Olivia said with a solemn nod, then pointed at the big red button on the wall that saidPRESS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. She raised her eyebrows and went back to her conversation with the lift technician.
“Okay…” she said to the technician, “thank you… No, I don’t think either of us is claustrophobic…” she replied. “Yes, I’ll practice some deep breathing.” She nodded. “I don’t need anything else… no worries… I think we both have music onour phones so no need to turn on the elevator music, but thank you, Giannis, I appreciate the offer… Okay, thank you… All right, speak later… Thank you, bye.”
She turned to Zeke. “Well, Giannis the lift technician is a lovely man who reminds me of my Year Eleven history teacher,” she said, “but he’s on the other side of the Village so it’ll be thirty minutes before he can help us get out.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m great company,” said Zeke, flashing her a smile which prompted Olivia to quite literally slide down the wall and sit on the floor.
“Am I that bad, Olivia?” he said, as she tried to ignore the way hearing her name on his lips made her feel.
Olivia looked over at him and then closed her eyes. No, he wasn’t that bad. He wasn’t bad at all. But the way his eyes lit up and the skin around them crinkled when he smiled was that bad. The way he was looking down at her with an equal measure of amusement and curiosity was that bad. And the way her pesky heart fluttered a little when he slid down the wall and sat next to her on the floor was that bad. Olivia was trying everything she could not to get distracted by Zeke Moyo, but her resolve was beginning to melt away. Dissolving into something much more difficult to hold on to.
27Zeke
DAY FOUR OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
As Zeke sat next to Olivia, he realized that whatever it was that he’d started to feel for her, he was already too far gone to shut it down. The sight of her when he’d walked into the elevator had quite literally stopped him midstep. He’d never reacted to anyone like that before. It had taken him a real moment to shake off. She wasn’t wearing her volunteer uniform; he could see it poking out of the bag on her shoulder. Instead, she was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white linen shirt with a few specks of brightly colored paint on the sleeve. When she’d slid down the wall, he’d joined her. But now that they were just a few centimeters apart, he wondered if he’d made the wrong decision. Because while he’d been able to keep the conversation going when they were standing up, now they were sitting so close together he couldn’t ignore the almost magnetic pull she seemed to have on him. Or how nervous he got around her.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” Olivia asked, looking over at him. “I just assumed when I was speaking to the technician.”
He held her gaze for a second too long. And then tried to act more confident than he felt. “The opposite actually,” he said.
“So, you like being squeezed tightly into small spaces?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. That perfectly arched eyebrow would be the death of him. “If that’s what you’re into, no judgment. This is a safe space,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders as she teased him.
He glanced down at her lips, noticed the deep-red lipstick she was wearing, and then quickly glanced away. He needed to get better at maintaining his composure.
“What I meant is that I don’t get claustrophobic because I’ve been trained not to.”
“Oh, now I need to know the full story.”
“Do you remember that football player who disappeared in the middle of the World Cup a few years ago?” he asked, grateful for a topic of conversation that would steady him. “So, the official story was that he got lost in the host city, but the truth is he got kidnapped.”
“Really?” said Olivia, her eyes widening.
“Really. Luckily, they were pretty amateur kidnappers—unlike you, who I know would excel at kidnapping,” he joked.
“It’s a given,” she said with the warm, bright, infectious laugh he was always trying to get out of her.
