“Boy,” was Layne’s only reply as he turned to walk away but he thought better of it and turned back. “Did you get your sentences diagrammed?”
Jasper’s grin died and he looked confused. “What?”
“Your sentences. Did Roc help you get them diagrammed?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Jasper mumbled.
“Jas?” Layne called his son’s attention to him. “Did you have sentences to diagram?”
“Yeah,” Jas answered and Layne stared at him so Jasper’s eyes went to the double doors, he walked the two feet Layne had moved away and he whispered, “Two weeks ago. I got a C on the assignment. Next time, I’ll ask Roc to help before I get the final grade.”
Layne swallowed down laughter before he muttered, “Good call.”
Then Layne turned back to his room and walked to it as he heard Jasper say, “’Night, Dad.”
“’Night, Bud,” Layne replied and opened the doors.
Rocky was diagonal on the bed, on her stomach, papers spread in front of her, pen in her hand, bare feet swinging in the air and Layne knew Jasper didn’t have to whisper his secret because she had earphones in her ears, an MP3 player on the bed and between the sound and her concentration on the papers, she hadn’t noticed he came in.
He rounded the bed wide until he got to her side and then moved in. He put a knee to the bed and was dropping forward with a hand on either side of her when she cried out, jumped and started to turn but his torso hit her back and he pinned her to the bed.
She popped an earphone out, he heard the music through it and she twisted her neck to say, “Layne, you scared the bejeezus out of me.”
He didn’t reply. He smiled at her before he leaned around her, putting his mouth to the opposite side of her neck at the same time his hand went into her hair and he tugged out her goddamned ponytail. He’d left her and her hair was down which was how he liked it so now it was going to be down again.
“Would you quit pulling out my ponytails?” she asked, sounding annoyed and trying to roll but he moved his lips up her neck and then nipped her ear with his teeth and she quit trying to roll.
“Don’t like ‘em,” he whispered in her ear.
“I don’t care,” she replied. “I do.”
“I don’t care.” He ran his tongue along the curve of her ear and her body froze. “I don’t,” he finished.
“Layne.”
There it was. Breathy. Needy. Beautiful.
“You’re either gonna have to wait, baby, or let me gag you or fuck you in the closet again. The boys are usin’ the weight room to study and fuck around,” he said softly in her ear.
“I’ll wait,” she whispered, his head came up and she twisted her neck to look at him. “Do they stay up late?”
He grinned at her then leaned in and touched his mouth to hers before he suggested, “We could take a shower.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled and her eyes dropped to his mouth.
He liked her eyes on his mouth, so much, if he did something about it, they wouldn’t make it to the shower so his eyes dropped to her papers thinking he’d be seeing homework assignments but they weren’t.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he studied the papers.
Her head moved and he saw she’d looked down too.
“Lesson plans,” she answered and then twisted her neck to face him again. “Next week is To Kill a Mockingbird week. It’s my favorite week of the semester.”
He got that. It was her favorite book. He’d read it in high school, thought it was pretty good but didn’t think much of it until she’d gone on about it. Because she’d loved it so much, he’d read it again and he’d appreciated it a fuckuva lot more. His favorite book was Slaughterhouse Five, then and now, but To Kill a Mockingbird was a close second.
Looking at her face, suddenly he realized he’d pay money to watch her teaching it.
“You nearly done?” he asked.
“Nearly,” she answered. “I was about to finish up.”
“Good,” he muttered, pulled her hair away from her neck, kissed the skin there again and then looked at her. “I’m gonna go make coffee and secure the house. Meet you in the shower.”
He started to knife away from her but she caught him by saying, “Okay but you can’t get my hair wet.”
He stared in her eyes before he asked, “Come again?”
“You can’t get my hair wet because if you do I’ll have to blow it out before going to bed and that’ll take forever and –”
He cut her off. “Baby, your hair’s gonna get wet.”
“Layne –”
“Blow it out tomorrow.”
“I can’t, it’ll be –”
Layne rolled off her, pulled her on top of him and then rolled her to her back, Layne on top of her. Then he kissed her until her arms were tight around his back, her leg had hooked around his hip and she was mewing in his mouth.
Then he lifted his head and whispered, “Your hair is gonna get wet and your gonna blow it out tomorrow, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back immediately, eyes hooded, arms locked tight around him.
Christ she was cute and she was hot.
“Look at me like that a second longer, sweetcheeks, I won’t give a fuck my boys hear you moan,” he warned, her eyes got wide and he grinned before he brushed his mouth against hers and ordered, “Finish then shower.”
“Right,” she murmured.
Layne knifed away and Rocky rolled to her stomach.
Then he walked downstairs, let the dog out one last time, got the coffeepot ready for the morning, let the dog in and secured the house. He said a last round of goodnights, went to his room and heard the shower going.
He met his woman there, her hair got wet and he made certain other parts of her got wetter.
In the end the water didn’t have to drown out her moans since Layne performed that chore with his mouth.
Then he watched the News, shoulders against the headboard with a sleeping Rocky’s wet, tangled hair splayed over his chest as she pinned him to the bed.
Chapter Nineteen
Wisdom, Compassion and Strength
“Hi Tanner! You here to see Rocky?”
Sharon Reynolds had seen him when he walked in the front doors of the school and she’d hightailed it away from her desk to greet him before he even hit the office door.
Layne smiled at her. “Sharon. Yeah. She free?” he asked but he knew she wasn’t.
“Nope, she’s teaching in the auditorium,” Sharon answered.
“Need to talk to her, it’s kind of important. Can you get a message to her?”
She waved her hand in front of her face. “Oh no, don’t worry about that. I’m sure the kids won’t mind you interrupting.” She leaned in and gave him a wink. “Just go on to the auditorium. You know where it is, don’t you?”
“Yeah, do I need to sign in?”
She smiled big at him. “I’ll do it for you. Just promise to stop by to visit the girls in the office and sign out, okay?”
Layne smiled back at her, just as big and her eyes locked on his mouth.
“Promise. Thanks, Sharon.”
“Right,” she whispered, still staring at his mouth and Layne didn’t hesitate, he turned and walked down the hall.
It was Wednesday and it was To Kill a Mockingbird week. Between working his cases, both paid and unpaid, talking to his mother, keeping an eye on Gabby’s place as well as Stew, hosting two teenaged girls at his house every night and trying to fit in catching up with Rocky, the week had already been staggeringly busy and he hadn’t had time to sneak in and watch Rocky teach.
Luckily, Sharon Reynolds made the sneaking in part easy.
The rest of it hadn’t been so easy.
Layne spoke to her but apparently Vera wasn’t ready to lay down her weapons, but at least now her shots were fired wide rather than Vera gutting Rocky with the bayonet.
Jasper had got Layne the make, model and color of TJ Gaines’s car b
ut no address. As far as Jasper could gather the intel, no one knew where he lived and no one had been there. Layne had cruised the church a dozen times in two and a half days and never saw a blue Honda sedan in the lot in order to stake it out and follow him home. He’d also cruised by the teenage kids’ hangouts and still no go with the Honda. This meant Layne was on duty that night to wait for Gaines to leave Youth Club and follow him from there.
Layne found out that Jasper wasn’t wrong and Keira was a nut and she liked boy bands and Jasper liked her enough to let her play boy band music in the house and do it loud. Layne did not see good things in the future because Tripp didn’t like boy bands, Vera definitely didn’t like boy bands, Devin seriously didn’t like boy bands and Rocky detested them nearly as much as Layne did. Jasper was going to have to shut that shit down soon or there was going to be all out war.
And Monday night Layne discovered Giselle Speakmon was the pretty blonde sitting next to TJ Gaines. She also clearly thought of Raquel Merrick as her idol and her parents did too seeing as Giselle’s younger sister had some kind of very shitty cancer that was far shittier than cancer was on the whole and Roc had done some charity event that made money for a house for parents to stay in close to the hospital. The house was about to be closed down and Rocky’s event had saved it. Giselle’s parents didn’t live far but what amounted to two hour trip every day for months was a burden they couldn’t bear on top of having a really sick kid as well as a healthy one at home. That house was next door to the hospital and one or the other got to stay in it for six months while their daughter had inpatient treatments which made life a whole lot easier and they fully credited Rocky with this saving grace.
The sister was now in remission and the Speakmon family was in awe of Saint Rocky. Therefore, because Rocky was there, their sweet, very quiet, painfully shy daughter was allowed to hang with Tripp at Tripp’s house. The parents dropped her off and Rocky took her home. Monday night, she’d been silent except she spoke a little to Rocky and a little to Keira. She gave Vera a wide berth, probably because Vera was trying too hard with Giselle at the same aiming bullets at Rocky. Jasper, Layne and Devin openly scared the shit out of her. But she seemed at her most comfortable huddled with Tripp and Layne knew why. Tripp made her laugh and there was something about the kid, something that made Layne’s gut get tight, because seeing her laugh he suspected she didn’t do it often, as in, at all. Tuesday night, she started coming out of herself, letting Vera in but Layne knew for the rest of them it was going to be a painful process.
With a house full of kids, his mother and Devin, Layne and Rocky didn’t find much time to connect, at least not the way he wanted to connect. They had zero chance to talk alone and by the time they hit the sack, she was out within minutes. Luckily, his dream Rocky hadn’t abandoned him. She woke him in plenty of time for Layne to turn to his real Rocky and wake her with his hands and mouth. It wasn’t as much as he wanted but it was always great, it kept getting better and it was a whole lot more than nothing so he wasn’t going to complain.
Stew, at least, was keeping his distance and Gabby, at least, was doing what she was told. She’d deposited the two K and she was laying low with her friend Brandy.
Layne turned right at the end of the wide front hall and walked down the corridor to the auditorium. Quietly, he opened the door, entered and kept his hand on it so it would just as quietly close behind him.
Then he stood at the back and watched Rocky do her thing.
She was sitting on the edge of the stage, her ankles crossed, her kids in the auditorium seats in front of her, one of them talking.
“You think Atticus Finch is hot, Ms. Merrick?” the girl asked and Rocky smiled at her and rested back, her palms on the stage.
“Oh yeah,” Rocky answered, Layne grinned, leaned a shoulder against the wall of the entryway to the auditorium, settled in and listened.
“He doesn’t even have a woman,” a boy called out.
“A man doesn’t need to have a woman to be hot, Dylan. He just has to be a man,” Rocky replied.
“Yeah, I can see it,” another boy put in. “He shot that dog. That’s all man.”
“No,” Rocky shook her head. “That wasn’t. But why he shot the dog was.”
The kids were silent, waiting for Roc to impart wisdom and she didn’t disappoint.
“You see, I read this book when I was young. I’d read it before I even had to read it, like I’m making you do,” she told them. “When I read it the first time, it was all about Boo.”
“Boo’s cool!” a girl cried out. “I love Boo.”
“Lots to love,” Rocky said. “Boo’s pure all the way through.”
“What do you mean pure?” another kid shouted.
“What do you think I mean?” Rocky asked.
“He’s a good guy?” the kid asked back.
“Yep,” Rocky answered.
“He’s kind,” a girl yelled.
“Right,” Rocky stated.
“He’s shut up in that house but he still cares about Jem and Scout. He lives his life through them,” a boy called out and Rocky nodded. “He looks out for them, keeps them safe.”
“All kids need folks to look out for them,” she told her class. “But motherless kids, well, they can have a great dad and they can have a great brother but, in the end, Jem and Scout were lucky they had Boo.”
At her words, Layne felt his chest seize and the auditorium got deathly quiet. She hadn’t talked about that when she was telling him why she loved To Kill a Mockingbird twenty years ago.
“Did you…” a girl started then paused, calling up the courage to go on, “did you have a Boo, Ms. Merrick?”
The auditorium grew silent again, this time it was uncomfortable because it was a personal question, asking too much.
But Rocky didn’t hesitate with her response. “No, Brittany, I never had a Boo. That’s why, when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was all about Boo.” She leaned forward and put her forearms on her thighs. “See, that’s the beauty of books. We get to take what we want out of them and it can be different for everyone. You get a good one, you may even find what you need. I needed Boo when I read that book the first time and I got him, so, in a way, I did have a Boo. The Boo. The second time, I needed my mind opened. The third time, I needed Atticus. That’s why this is such a brilliant book. Firstly, because it is brilliant. Secondly, because every time you read it, you get something new out of it.”
“You needed your mind opened?” a boy yelled.
“Yep,” Rocky answered. “You taste injustice, even if it’s fictional, really taste it, it has a way of doing that. Sometimes, you can never put the shoe on the other foot. We can’t go back in time and know what it was like to be a black person then.” Her eyes scanned the all white faces of her class and she went on. “Even today, when things are supposed to be so much better, not one of you can understand what it’s like to be black, to live with the knowledge of what happened to your ancestry and still face injustice. But that book makes us taste it and, reading it, we know how bitter that taste is and we know we don’t like it. But that bitter wakes you up, and when you wake up, you open your mind to things in this world, you make yourself think. Then you’ll decide you don’t like the taste of injustice, not for you and not for anyone, and you’ll understand that even though all the battles can’t be won, that doesn’t mean you won’t fight.”
“Like Atticus,” a girl called out.
“Like Atticus,” Rocky repeated on a smile and sat straight. “Atticus Finch is the most beautiful man I’ve ever met in print. He’s a good dad and he does what’s right, not what’s safe, not what’s popular. What’s right. He’s gentle. He’s smart. He’s strong. He’s decisive and he’s willing to follow through with his decisions, no matter what the odds. Even if it means doing something heinous, like walking into a street and putting down a rabid dog. Taking the life of another being to put it out of its misery and make people safe. If you only read that on
e scene, you’d know the beauty that is Atticus Finch. Lucky for us, we had that whole book to get to know him.”
“Is that why you think he’s hot?” a boy asked.
“Yes, Zach, that’s why I think he’s hot,” Rocky answered.
“I liked it when he sat outside the police station and faced down the crowd,” another boy called out.
“That’s good too,” Rocky told him on a smile.
“I liked the courtroom scenes,” a girl shouted. “They rocked!”
“Yes, Luanne, they did. Except for the verdict, they definitely rocked,” Rocky agreed.
“The verdict sucked,” a boy yelled.
“Did it make you angry?” Rocky asked him.
“Well, yeah,” he answered.
“How angry?” Rocky asked.
“It ticked me off,” the kid returned. “I had to quit reading for awhile.”
Rocky smiled at him and asked, “And why did it tick you off?”
“Because it was wrong,” he replied.
“It was more than wrong, Will. It was injustice,” Rocky jumped off the stage, the movement liquid, landing gracefully on her high heels and she walked to stand close to the class. “Open your minds and learn from this tale. Do not stand still for injustice. If you know something isn’t right, find your strength and stand against it. I’m not going to kid you that it’s easy, it’s not. If you think Atticus Finch went home at night and slept easy because he knew he was doing the right thing, you’re wrong. He worried. He worried for his children. He worried for himself. He worried for his town. He worried for the world he lived in and his children were growing up in. He worried for the man he was trying to defend. And he knew he was going to lose. He knew it. But that didn’t stop him. Because even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. Because every woman and man, no matter their color or their religion, is entitled to a good defense. And because Jem and Scout would grow up to be like their father, spreading his wisdom, understanding his compassion and sharing his strength which are the only, the only weapons we have against injustice.” She walked along the front of the class but her eyes scanned the kids while she did it and her gaze was focused, piercing every last kid. “If you’re nothing else in this life, be wise, be compassionate and be strong because those three things are everything.”
Golden Trail (The 'Burg Series) Page 41