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It captures the need-to-know of the truth. We’re about to reach the thirteenth floor, and I want to hear Nathan’s reason for being here.

“Now you,” I instruct. We take another break, letting our weight rest on the brackets holding the elevator guardrails in place. Neither of us are wearing any scents. Scent memory is a powerful thing, and a potentially risky identifying detail that might give us away undercover—so all I smell is the metallic scent of the shaft and the popcorn.

I only hear Nathan’s deep breathing before he finally says, “My path was a little more… random. I studied linguistics, then worked as a data scientist. Then my younger brother died a few days before Christmas four years ago,” he says, his voice splitting just a crack. It’s subtle, but the shaft is quiet, so I hear it. “He was on his way to my parents’ house for the holiday party. He stopped at a bank along the way. One that was robbed. He didn’t make it out. The FBI got involved.”

“Nathan,” I croak out, “I’m so sorry.”

How could I never have known this about Nathan? We both lost people during this time of year, and that drove us to the FBI. To each other. To this moment.

“Let’s keep going,” he says, working his way up.

We’re almost to the fourteenth floor, but I still don’t know enough about Nathan. At Quantico, most people—us included—were too busy looking to the future to dwell on our pasts. Joining the FBI was like starting over, in a way.

“You got one more floor in you?” I propose, desperate to fill in all the Nathan blank spaces.

He silently agrees by continuing to climb. “Holidays weren’t the same after that,” he says. “Nothing was. I remembered my experience with the FBI—I had a lot of questions after my brother’s death and demanded just as many answers—and applied. At first, it gave me something to believe in again. I felt untethered. Didn’t know where I belonged. Being a special agent, going undercover, I thought it could give me a purpose. That it’d let me disappear.”

Nathan couldn’t help his brother or the people in that bank, but now he can, in a way. “Heartbreak can be a powerful motivator,” I say from experience.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I wanted to redirect all the bad feelings I had into something good. I really believed I could.”

The believed comes out a little too loaded with a tone I’m not sure how to interpret. What’s happened in the past year? I’m about to ask when there’s a loud creaking noise, and suddenly Nathan and I find ourselves moving upward as the cables move the elevator to a higher floor.

“We need to get back in the elevator,” Nathan says.

Any lingering questions vanish, and my body kicks into action. We climb down as the elevator moves up. Being in motion silences the noise in my head—a perk of the job—and I just focus on what my body’s doing and not the fact that, if we get dragged by the cables we’re climbing to the top of the shaft, we die or, worse, if we end up on the seventeenth floor, our covers could be blown.

“We’re close enough. Jump,” Nathan says. Our interpretations of close enough are very different, but there’s no time to question it.

We let go of the cables and fall, landing on the roof as the elevator starts to slow.

“We can’t be seen together,” I say. “You go first.”

Nathan gives a head shake. “Too dangerous alone. I need to know you’ll be okay.”

There’s no time for brainstorming an alternate plan because the elevator comes to a stop. We quickly lower ourselves down, my eyes squinting against the light of the elevator’s sconces. Voices reach us from the other side of the metal door. I try to think fast, but my mind’s coming up blank. Apparently, when it comes to saving my own life, I’m useless.

Then Nathan sheds his jacket and sweeps it over my shoulders, covering my security guard uniform.

“Do you trust me?” he whispers, mussing up his hair and shielding his body in front of mine.

“Of course—”

He gently pushes me against the corner of the elevator, his lips hovering just above mine. They’re barely touching, but I feel the prickle of his beard and his warm breath on my skin. He has his hand spread against the paneling above me, his arm keeping me protected from what’s on the other side of those doors.

And then those doors open, and my security guard cover disappears. Suddenly Scarlett’s back. Turns out, I want to follow where that breath leads, so I finish what Nathan started and commit.

My mouth meets his right as the doors open. Now I’m kissing Nathan Lambros, for our cover, for our safety, but also… because I want to? That can’t be right.

Even more shocking is that he seems to want to kiss me, too.

So now we’re kissing, and my heart is tilting in my chest, and it’s like my body’s getting its fill of something that it was starving for. I didn’t even know I was hungry.

There are voices—three distinct ones I don’t recognize—but the urgency in their tones don’t change. Late-night office workers? Cleaners? I’ll take anything but the criminal groups we’re tracking.

“We’ll get the next one,” someone says, amused, before the elevator doors close and our journey to the top floor resumes.

I’m emboldened by our close call, leaning into the enjoyment of what our tongues are doing and the playful kisses alongside deep ones. I tug Nathan closer, and a part of me wonders if I’m only trying to survive this or if this kiss has been a long time coming and I’m not ready for it to end?