Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Little One

He was twenty-six, with his sleeves pushed to the elbow and a stethoscope around his neck.

I found him at the nurses' station on the fourth floor of a Dayton hospital, charting by the light of a monitor.

I knew him at once by the way he held his chin.

"Excuse me," I said. "Were you ever at a place called Greer House?"

The pen stopped.

He looked up slowly.

"Nobody has said that name to me in about twenty years."

"I'm Mona. I was nine."

"The girl with the braids," he said. "You gave me half your toast once."

I laughed, and then I had to hold the edge of the counter.

He took his break early.

We sat in a break room with a humming vending machine and two paper cups of coffee neither of us touched.

I told him about the fire, and about the candle, and I did not make it smaller.

He listened, with his whole face.

"I saw you on the news this morning," he said. "My roommate sent it to me. I sat in the car for an hour."

"I'm sorry."

"For what? I was six. I thought the sky had turned orange because of me."

He rubbed his face.

"What I remember is a hand over my eyes."

"Ansel's?"

"He picked me up like I weighed nothing, and he put me through the window into the grass."

"He told me to count to one hundred and not move, and I counted."

"I got to sixty before the matron came."

His voice was steady, and his eyes were not.

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