1.
Rayna takes a slow, deep breath. It has been years since she felt any kind of apprehension before going on stage. The excitement, the adrenaline rush were still there, but fright had disappeared a long time ago. Tonight, though, there's a knot in her stomach that won't leave. While they have three musicians with them for part of the show, for at least half of the set it's going to be only her and Deacon out there.
"Freakin' out a little bit?"
She turns to see a grinning Deacon entering her dressing room. She could deny it, feign offense, but what's the point when he can read her like an open book. There is one truth she has been able to keep from him these last 13 years, and she suspects the only reason is he cannot envisage she would ever do something like that to him. It breaks her heart a little more every time she thinks about it.
"We need a pre-show ritual," she says. His automatic smile tells her he remembers. "A new one," she adds quickly.
"I'll think about it," he offers with attempted seriousness, but she knows this smile and no breath deep enough will help her here.
2.
She can't sleep. She has tossed and turned and tried every possible position, but sleep won't come. She can't blame it on the bed, Bucky wasn't lying about that nice mastersuite in their brand new bus.
She reaches for her phone.
Sleeping?
The answer comes almost immediately.
Yes.
She smiles.
I think we should add That Could Be Us.
We can do that.
She's tempted to call him, it wouldn't be the first time she needs to hear his voice in the middle of the night to be able to find sleep. She realizes it's probably a safer thing to do when there's a 30-minute drive between them instead of a 10-second walk to his bunk. 30 minutes to change her mind and drive back home in case of spontaneous, reckless decision-making.
Her phone lights up again.
This is going to work, Ray.
3.
They had been discussing – bickering would be a more appropriate word – how to name the tour, but for some reason, they couldn't come to an agreement. At their next pre-tour rehearsal, Deacon showed up with small scraps of paper that he proceeded to set down on the stage, one by one, blank side up.
"These are all the names of our songs. Pick one."
And I keep trying to pretend
This ache for you is gonna end
But I know better than that now
We're all we've been missing
If we could just stop resisting
And give in to what's supposed to be
Chance, sometimes, lacks subtlety.
4.
Her phone has been laying on her hotel room's couch for the last half-hour with her messaging app open and a one-word text waiting to be sent.
Talk?
They've been talking all day, they've only avoided the talk all day. They have, after all, years of practice at casually chatting about everything but what needs to be discussed.
She could have said no to this tour when Watty first suggested it. She could have said no to this tour in Deacon's car, that night, after their impromptu love-and-lust-filled duet at the Bluebird. She could have said no to this tour after their conversation in the park when she told him she needed to let him go, let him move on with his life.
When Deacon kissed her last night on their way back to their hotel's rooms, her back against the elevator's wooden wall and her fingertips digging into his shoulder blades, she could have told him to stop. But she might want to quit pretending there was the slightest chance she would have.
5.
"Baby, you're falling asleep."
"Uh-uh."
Deacon is propped on one elbow, his free hand on Rayna's hip, his forefinger tracing slow circles on her bare skin.
"We have soundcheck in 20 minutes."
"I'm canceling tonight's show."
"Oh, yeah?"
Her voice drops an octave. "We regret to inform you that all remaining dates of Rayna Jaymes & Deacon Claybourne's Surrender Tour have been canceled due to the unwillingness of its headliners to ever leave their bed again. We apologize for any inconvenience it may cause."
"I'm calling Bucky now."
Rayna shifts closer to him, smiling, her eyes still closed.
"Do you know how much I have missed this?"
6.
Rayna is swiping her finger across the screen, going through the first batch of selected shots the photographer sent them. It was Bucky's idea to have someone follow them for a couple of days, backstage and onstage, to get material for the live album's booklet.
She freezes.
From his seat at the other end of the bus couch, Bucky notices her change of attitude. "Ray?"
"I don't remember her taking this one."
"Dammit. I told her, no stolen pics, nothing without your consent," he says, scooting over until he's sitting next to her.
"No, I... love it. We should use it for the cover."
It's a shot of Deacon and her alone at the end of a small backstage hallway. They're standing, facing each other. Deacon is holding his guitar and they seem to be rehearsing some song. The picture is poorly lit, almost a little grainy, but she has the most genuine smile and he's looking at her like nothing else in the world matters.
"It's... perfect."
7.
The thing about bubbles is you know they can't last forever, but you don't know exactly when they're going to burst. What it took to burst hers was one phone call from Tandy.
"I'm sure you know what you're doing."
Rayna knows. She also knows what she'll have to do soon and the kind of pain it's going to cause. This last part was conveniently floating somewhere outside her bubble until now.
She'll have to talk to Teddy. This conversation will probably cause more relief than pain, they both know it.
She'll have to talk to the girls.
There's a third talk she'll need to have – how couldn't she – but this one, she's not anywhere close to ready to start thinking about it.