Really short one-shot on the morning after the proposal. I just wanted to play a little with the idea of Rayna finally letting her emotions come to the surface after how closed off she'd been all season.
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Rayna woke up and realized she'd been sleeping on her couch. The early morning sun was just beginning to stream through the thin shears on her floor to ceiling windows. She rolled over and felt the kink in her neck as she strained to look at the clock. 5:45. Only six hours since Deacon had left. Six hours and 2 minutes since he'd pulled her towards him, steadily kissing her, and throwing everything in her carefully constructed world into a full on tumble. She touched her lips, they were still throbbing with the sensation of how his own had grabbed onto hers, expertly sucking on her lower lip the way that always made her whole body quiver from the inside.
She was glad that it would be at least two hours before Luke showed up, she couldn't deal with him right now. She was a mess of emotions that swung all over the place from blissful to terrified, and at this moment she wasn't sure which man was making her feel what. It had been so long since she had let her emotions control her like this. It had been a crazy year, and she'd worked hard to move past everything that happened, putting all the trauma into a box that she had carefully constructed so that it locked everything up, and kept it where it wouldn't touch her. She'd put the accident in there, she'd put all the fallout from Maddie's paternity in there, she put her father's death in there, and most of all she'd put Deacon Claybourne in there. She'd really tried to move on. She started dating Luke, and had begun to build a foundation on top of that box that she hoped was solid. And for months it had worked. Things with Luke were good, and she's stopped worrying about everything she'd locked away…that is until Deacon had come busting out, toppling everything she'd carefully constructed in one short conversation.
She looked down at her hand, cramped from holding his ring tight against her body all night. Her shirt still had a hint of his scent, and it was far more intoxicating than she would have liked to admit to herself. She felt the sudden desperate need to strip off all her clothes and run away. She headed upstairs and peeled her shirt and jeans off before placing both rings on the counter and jumping into the shower. She shampooed her hair and ferociously scrubbed her skin clean, but when she emerged from the shower, she still smelled him. He was in her hair, on her skin, in her blood, his presence was everywhere, and no matter what she did she couldn't get away.
Tears started to come quickly, running down her cheeks as she stood naked in her bathroom. Maybe that box hadn't been as tightly closed as she thought it was. If she was being honest with herself, she'd started to dream about Deacon again in the last few weeks. He'd never completely left her, no matter how hard she'd tried to push him out, but lately he was there more often than not; ever since that day at the cabin when they'd fought about Maddie, when she'd admitted to him that she'd wanted to be his wife, that she'd cried herself to sleep for a year aching for his touch. He'd seeped into her hazy thoughts as she drifted off to sleep, and kept her company all through the night. She'd been glad that Luke hadn't noticed her slipping back into her old patterns, but maybe he had, maybe that's what the very sudden public proposal had been about last night. Well if he wanted to bring things to a head he certainly had. He not only managed to put a ring on her finger, he'd gotten Deacon to do it too.
She picked up her brush and combed through her tangled hair, all the while staring at the two rings that were still sitting on her bathroom countertop. When she was done instead of putting the brush back in her drawer she walked into the closet and pulled out an overnight bag. She threw the brush in as well as a couple of pairs of jeans and a few shirts she pulled from a shelf with easy access. She picked up the rings and locked them in her jewelry box, then she headed back downstairs to the kitchen. She wrote a little note that she left on the pancake mix that she'd pulled out last night in preparation for Luke's arrival before Deacon had beat him to it. "I'm sorry. I just need some time to think. – R"
She carefully closed the door behind her and got into her SUV. She looked at the clock again. 6:45. Then she pulled out onto the open road.
