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He blinks a few times at me, like he’s seeing a ghost. “It’s about that time of year, isn’t it?” he mumbles, eyes flicking to the wreath in the elevator.

I cross my arms over my blue uniform. “Right on schedule.”

First thing he does is check the corners for cameras.

“Don’t worry, I’m the one monitoring them,” I say.

He presses the button for the seventeenth floor, and the doors close. Now it’s just us and the mystery of the past year of silence hanging between us in this small, enclosed space.

Then he turns to me and asks, “Just me, or does this elevator smell like popcorn?”

“Movie theater concessions are upstairs,” I say as the elevator carries us up.

“And this is how people get down, with their buckets of leftovers.”

“Ding, ding, ding,” I say, a hint of teasing underneath it.

And just like that, any initial tentativeness and wondering of where he’s been, if he’s okay, if we’re okay, has vanished.

I bite down a smile, holding a neutral face. “Missed me?”

He draws in a shallow breath but finally looks at me, his eyes softening around the edges. He wants to say yes, I can tell. Of course he’s missed us, missed this, missed our untraditional holidays together. He doesn’t actually say yes, though, and it stings, just a little.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask quietly, facing forward again.

“Deep cover.”

“With Arnold,” I say unnecessarily. “He’s here, isn’t he?” This is the same group the Wangs are doing business with, after all.

Nathan doesn’t make eye contact with me when he mutters, “Yeah.”

“I assume Hawk’s here, too?”

He nods.

“Give them my regards,” I say flatly. Memories of last New Year’s Eve come rushing back. “So you did earn their trust.”

Nathan’s mouth is a hard line. “Many times over.”

Last year, I really hoped he would just walk away from that assignment and start fresh. Whatever it was he did to get in the Durands’ favor, it’s clearly affected him. Not in the way a year in deep cover does a number on someone, but in a way that’s made him even rougher around the edges. Physically, his hair’s a little longer, the stubble on his face fully grown out into a beard. His edges on the inside have toughened up, too, I sense. This isn’t the boy I trained with at Quantico, but a man who’s been through it.

The elevator creeps up toward the fifth floor, and in just twelve more floors, I’ll lose him again for who knows how long.

“Well, I missed you,” I say, surprising myself with my words. A better response probably would’ve been silence and not admitting any level of emotional vulnerability. There’s a chance I won’t see Nathan next year, though, and for some reason, I don’t want to go a whole year without him knowing this.

“You missed having someone to save?” Nathan finally asks without any bite. There’s a small smile playing on his lips.

“You’ll repay the favor someday, I’m sure.”

We pass the sixth floor, and eventually the seventh.

I become way too aware of what the distance between us has done to me. One-upping him, competing with him, giving it back as good as we each got… Yes, I missed all of that. Somehow, though, it’s like my body knows that this feeling runs deeper.

Weird thoughts to be having in an elevator on Christmas. Nathan will get off soon, we’ll barely acknowledge each other in the goodbye, and life will go on.

And then the elevator jolts to a stop somewhere between the eighth and ninth floors.

I press a button, and then another, but none light up. I lower myself against the corner of the elevator, hugging my knees to my chest. “You should sit, too. Conserve energy,” I tell Nathan.