Space (Laws of Physics #2)(65)

She stood at the range, stirring the mixture with a whisk, splitting her attention between me and the hot chocolate. “It’s not that much work.”

I moved my eyes to the orange and the zester and the measuring spoons and the spices. “Not everything worth having requires a struggle. Sometimes, things that are easy are also very, very good.”

Her lips quirked to the side. “You say that, but just wait until you drink this.” She nodded to herself. “Then you’ll be singing a different tune. Struggle can sometimes make the end result so much better.”

“The end result is the end result. A struggle doesn’t change it.”

“Ha! I disagree.”

I leaned my elbow on the countertop, placing my thumb beneath my chin and pressing my index finger along my bottom lip. “How so?”

“Because then you know you’ve earned it.”

My eyebrows jumped. “Does everything have to be earned?”

Mona kept her eyes on the saucepan, and it seemed like she was working to keep her features free of telling expression. “Not everything. Just most things.”

“Really.”

“In my experience,” she said quietly, her lips thinning.

I blinked at her, because a great deal of Mona DaVinci had just come into focus, and this clarity had me asking, “You expect people to earn a place with you? To prove themselves?”

Her frown was immediate, and she looked confused as her gaze searched mine. “What?”

“You expect people to struggle? To earn a place?”

Now she reared back, looking genuinely perplexed by my conclusion. “No. Of course not.”

“Then what did you mean? ‘In your experience’?”

“Just that—” she shrugged, stirring the hot chocolate faster “—I don’t want anyone to give me something I don’t deserve. I want to feel like I’ve earned what I have, then I know it’s mine.” She sighed, and then huffed a laugh devoid of humor. “And, believe me, I understand the irony of my statement. Here I am, in my parents’ mansion, surrounded by luxury I had nothing to do with.”

I want to feel like I’ve earned what I have.

Huh. . . well, damn.

A conversation I’d had with Melvin the evening Mona had arrived resurfaced in my memory, felt pertinent to the conversation she and I were having now. Suddenly, it was difficult to breathe.

Mona brought her own food. She made her own bed. She cleaned up after herself.

“Did you pay for your own college?” I asked.

Mona gave me a funny look. “Yes. Kind of. I had a scholarship.”

“And now? Grad school?”

“Yes. I have grants, and scholarships.”

“What about living expenses?” I was being tactless, but now that the suspicion surfaced, I needed to know. “Who pays those?”

Mona closed one eye, scrunching her face, and peeked at me through the other. “I do. Why?”

Of course.

“What did you get your brother for his birthday?”

She swallowed. “A few things.”

“And what did he get you?”

Her lips thinned again. She didn’t answer.

I stood. “And your parents? Did you get them anything?”

She shrugged.

“And they sent nothing, right?”

Mona tucked her lips between her teeth and when she lifted her eyes to mine, they were cool, aloof. “What’s your point?”

The urge to wrap her in a hug had my feet moving before I’d told them to and I gave myself a mental kick for having it backward. Mona didn’t expect anything from anyone. She’d saved her sister, because that’s who she was.

Which meant what for us?

Did she think she needed to earn me? Conversations, interactions between us—both here and in Chicago—reframed themselves, and one in particular struck me as important.

“When we were in the pool, in Chicago,” I started carefully, trailing my fingers on the kitchen counter as I moved slowly closer, absorbing every shift and change behind her gaze. “When we raced.”

Mona straightened her spine, her attention darting over every part of me except my eyes. “What about it?”

“What were you trying to earn?” Her anger at me, when I’d forfeited the race, had never made sense. I stopped swimming because I didn’t want to fight with her, and also because seeing her in that bikini had been torture.

Currently, Mona pressed her lips together, swallowed again, and when she spoke her voice was gravelly, quiet. “If you remember, the bet was that whoever won got to stay and do laps, and the other person had to leave. I wanted to earn the right to stay and swim laps.”

“But that wasn’t the reason why you were angry. What were you really trying to earn?” I’d made it to where she stood, still stirring the hot chocolate, but I didn’t touch her.

She huffed another laugh, this one sounded nervous. “It was—I was being silly.” She turned off the stove, wiped her hands on a towel, her movements fidgety.

“Tell me.”

“You want honesty,” she said, and I got the sense she was talking to herself, reminding herself. “If you want to know the truth, fine. I made a secret bet with myself too. That if I won the race, then I’d, uh—” she crossed to a cabinet, finishing her sentence with her back turned while she pulled mugs down for the hot chocolate “—I’d tell you the truth, right then, about who I was and why I was there.”