Then before Cosgrove could reply, Layne turned, saw Jasper was close to Morrie, his eyes on his old man.

“Go get some pizza, Bud, yeah?” Layne ordered.

Layne stared at his Dad as he said slowly, “Yeah.”

“Good game,” Layne muttered, stopped himself from clapping Jasper on the shoulder and walked by him to Tripp who was standing with Gabby.

Tripp he slapped on the shoulder, his fingers curling around, he gave his son a few gentle jerks.

Then he said, “Go have fun, Pal.”

“Okay, Dad,” Tripp whispered, looked at Layne for three beats then peeled off and followed Jasper who was walking side by side with Keira out of the grounds.

Layne looked around and, still not spotting Stew, he asked Gabby a question he really did not want to ask.

“You need a ride home?”

“I’m good,” she said softly and the way she spoke made Layne focus on her. “Wish they had that all their lives, Tanner,” she went on and Layne felt his neck muscles contract before she finished on a whisper. “But it’s good they have it now.”

Then she hurriedly turned and just as hurriedly walked away.

Morrie clapped him on the back as he walked by, Layne tipped his chin up at Cal and Colt as they made their way passed him toward their women and he gave Dave, Ernie and Spike the high sign which made Dave nod and all of them begin to move away while Rocky approached.

“How’d that go?” she asked, her eyes going beyond him, indicating she was referring to the showdown with Cosgrove.

“I’m not thinkin’ good,” he replied and she got close and bumped him with her shoulder.

“Tell me over pizza,” she invited. “All this talk about pizza and I’m starved. I think it’s my turn to treat.”

He looked down at her to see she was talking in a light way but her eyes were intense, studying him and trying to read him without showing she was.

“Sweetcheeks, we got two pizza places in this ’burg and both of ‘em will be crawling with kids.”

“We’ll get Reggie’s, take it to Merry’s.”

That sounded like a plan.

“You’re on but I’m buyin’,” he said, turning and throwing an arm around her shoulders, pointing her to the exit.

“It’s my turn,” she repeated, sliding her arm around his waist.

“Baby, you just put down first and last and a deposit. I’ll get pizza.”

She walked one foot crossing in front of the other so her weight pressed into him, taking them both off stride and he remembered she’d do that too, all the time, just to horse around when they’d walk close together.

That new bullet scored through his gut but he was able to handle it when she yielded.

“Okay, Layne, you’ve convinced me. You’re buying.”

* * * * *

“Let me get this straight,” Rocky started, sitting cross-legged facing him on Merry’s couch. “Stew Baranski is screwing over your ex-wife; I’m getting divorced from a cheating ass**le; I just took on an apartment that costs about double what I can afford if I have to live on my own salary; Coach Cosgrove, who’s a jerk all the time, by the way, not just tonight, has thrown down, threatening to get me fired; you’re lodging a formal complaint against him on Monday; and you and I are faking a relationship in order to uncover a dirty cop who, nearly seven weeks ago, almost got you killed.”

Layne, lazing back into the corner of Merry’s couch, his feet on the coffee table next to the closed box that contained the remains of a decimated pizza (when Rocky said she was hungry, she did not lie and he made a mental note for the future that a concession stand hotdog would not cover it for Roc), replied, “That’s about it, sweetcheeks.”

She listed to the side and rested her head on the top of the couch, muttering, “We’re f**ked.”

He grinned. “We’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

Layne kept grinning. “I keep sayin’ that because we’ll be fine.”

Rocky closed her eyes and sighed.

Layne lifted a leg and nudged her knee with his shin before returning his foot to the coffee table.

Rocky opened her eyes.

“Cosgrove got reason to be cocky?” he asked quietly.

She looked over his head then back at him.

“Let’s just say that I don’t adhere entirely to the School Board approved curriculum.”

His grin got bigger as he muttered, “Baby.”

She lifted her head from the couch.

“It’s boring, Layne, and the kids don’t learn shit. If they get Halsey, the ones who want the grades do the work but they don’t get anything out of it. The ones who don’t care, I kid you not, they sleep. They sleep through his class. Literature is art and art is about passion, it’s about drive, it’s about beauty. How can you slide through a semester of that and not be moved by it?”

Layne watched her and he knew this was dangerous territory. He knew it by the light in her eyes, the passion, the drive, the beauty of it and he was moved by it. He was moved that even after eighteen years, when she had that same light in her eyes when she was studying to be a teacher, it hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. And he didn’t need Rocky to move him that way. She was moving him enough.

Even knowing that, he didn’t do a f**king thing about it.

“Do what you do and f**k ‘em,” Layne advised.

“Easy for you to say,” she muttered, reaching out to grab her bottle of beer, she brought it back, took a pull, dropped her hand and then her eyes went back to him. “You didn’t just pay first, last and put down a deposit on a luxury apartment tonight.”

“They won’t fire you,” he assured her.

“No? I’ve worked for that school for ten years, Layne, and I’ve been hauled in front of the School Board four times.”

“Why?”

“Uptight, ignorant parents pissed about shit they don’t understand. Do you know, I had a complaint lodged against me because I make the kids memorize Poe’s Annabelle Lee and some parent thought ‘sepulcher’ was a sex palace?”

Layne burst out laughing.

“No joke!” she shouted over his laughter. “They thought it was about underage sex!”

Layne forced himself to quit laughing and looked back at her. “How could they think that?”

“I was a child, and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea; but we loved with a love that was more than a love – I and my Annabelle Lee,” she quoted, those words struck deep, all humor fled and Layne stared at her as she went on softly. “It’s the most beautiful, bittersweet, sad love poem ever written, Layne. When I first introduce it, I take them to the choir room, which is soundproofed and has no windows. I turn out the lights, light candles and make them put on blindfolds and I recite it to them, shutting out everything and making them hear the words of a man broken when he lost his bride.” She closed her eyes. “But our love was stronger by far than the love of those much older than we, of many far wiser than we, and neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabelle Lee.” She shook her head and opened her eyes. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “Even the boys cry. I even get through to the boys. I’m teaching beauty, Layne, how can that have rules?”