Page 32 of Iron Will
“Promise me,” he insists. He reaches across the table and puts a finger under my chin, lifting my face up toward his.
The contact, unexpectedly electric, jolts me. Startled, I look up just as his eyes lock on mine.
In them is an expression I’ve never seen from him, or from any other man. It’s got nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about for the last fifteen minutes.
It’shunger. A desire so raw, so immediate, it shakes me to my core.
In his eyes, I see all of my own desire reflected back at me.
Every thought I’ve had about his hands on my body, late at night as I lie in the dark.
Every dream I’ve woken from, my skin crying out to be touched.
Every time I’ve whispered his name as I find my release, slick fingers between my legs — and then told myself I need to stop thinking about him, even though it’s just a fantasy.
When he withdraws his hand, I’m trembling.
“Rourke,” I half-whisper, my unsteady voice betraying me. “I’m doing it for everyone. If you hurt him here at the hospital, people will see it.” I shake my head. “You’ll go to jail. And Mickey won’t. And he’ll still be with Paisley’s mom, and there won’t be anything we can do about it. You won’t have done them any good at all.”
His jawline hardens. “I’m gonna enjoy fucking this guy over,” he growls.
“Fine. But you’re right: if there’s a good way to do it, it’s this one.”
How is it that suddenly, trapping Mickey into trying to steal from the hospital seems like thesanecourse of action?
Rourke closes his eyes for a second, his jaw still tense. When he opens them again and looks at me, I see all the force of the emotions he’s trying to contain within himself.
“Tell me something, Laney the social worker,” he rasps. “Doesn’t it eat at you? Shit like this?”
“Yes,” I admit softly. “It does. I see a lot of things that really get to me. That make it hard to sleep at night, sometimes.” I let out a ragged breath. “But often, those cases are the ones where the course of action is clear. Where I don’t have to question what the best thing to do is. The worst cases for me— the hardest ones — are when both of the parents are unfit. It’s hard to know what to do in cases like that. To know at what point a child would be better off being removed from their family.” I shake my head. “At least here, we know Bethany loves Paisley. She’s just in a tough situation. There’s hope.”
I stare into Rourke’s glinting eyes. Maybe I should be afraid of him. But more than anything, I’m filled with admiration at how much he seems to care about this young girl.
“Why’d you decide to be a social worker?” he demands.
My mind is starting to reel with all these sudden changes of subject. “Why do you ask?”
His expression is unreadable. “You don’t seem like the type.”
Despite my confusion, I have to smile. “What does that mean? What does a social worker look like?”
“The ones I’ve met?” He scoffs. “Tired. Old. Prematurely gray.”
“How many social workers have you met?”
“No changing the subject,” he says gruffly. “I asked you a question.”
“I, um…” I hesitate. “Well, I guess it was the combination of a lot of things.”
I take a sip of my coffee, considering how much I should tell him.
“When I was a little girl,” I say, “I had this friend. Emma. Her parents were abusive to her. I didn’t really know the full extent of it at the time. I just knew that her mom was mean. And that whenever I’d see them together at school or something, my friend always looked really scared.”
Thinking back to that time, my stomach starts to hurt, even all these years later.
“One day, she didn’t show up to school. That in itself wasn’t that unusual. She skipped a lot, for whatever reason. But then she didn’t show up the next day, either. I remember that was a Friday. Because after that was the weekend. And I just figured she’d have to be back on Monday, you know?”
I swallow painfully. “Well, Monday came. And when I got to school, I remember that almost right away, it felt like something was…wrong. Something I couldn’t quite figure out. But all the teachers and other adults were acting really strange. They were usually so smiley and friendly. But that morning their faces looked weird. Like they were trying to look normal, but just couldn’t do it.