Author's Note: My first foray into Nashville fic. Wondering what exactly I've got myself into.
I don't own Nashville, the characters, or anything affiliated. Orion is mine, though, and I've become quite fond of him while writing this. Which, won't lie, really surprised me. Who knew I could learn to love something associated with Avery frikkin' Barkley.
I.
The lack of oranges disappointed him the most.
Gunnar hadn't spent a whole lot of time in Florida, but one thing he always pictured when he thought of the state – aside from the beaches, palm trees, and the ocean – was the miles of orange groves. The palm tree part hadn't let him down, but Gunnar had to see one single orange, and he had to admit, he was disappointed.
They had pulled off the main roads of Fort Pierce a few miles back, and so far the only thing remotely "Floridian" Gunnar had seen were miles of boats and broken-down store fronts, and a few choice spaces he was sure had been used to film some gory slasher movies. The marina they were passing right now especially gave him the creeps, lined with rusted-out tankers and old railroad cars that sat off long-overgrown tracks. The pouring rain added to how spooky this place felt, as heavy clouds the color of bullets swept over the water, the forgotten railcars, the abandoned shipyard; the Texaco station, the bait and tackle shops.
"When's it gonna stop raining?"
Gunnar turned towards Orion just as the TAYLOR CREEK MARINA sign swept past the storm-streaked window. Orion was sitting on his knees, face pressed to the window, palms pressed flat against the cold glass.
Gunnar looked over at Scarlett. She was sitting towards the front of the bus, ear buds in, biting her lip and staring out the front window, a distant look on her face. It was probably the rough cuts to the songs they'd written a few weeks ago, but whatever it was, it didn't look like anyone was going to drag her back to earth.
Orion rocked against the couch, bouncing off the window before falling against it. Then he rocked back, and slapped his hands against the glass.
Gunnar reached over and grabbed his arms.
"Knock it off," he said. "Come on, don't do that. You're gonna break the window."
Orion scowled. "I can't break the windows. I do it all the time."
"Well, stop," he said, gripping the boy's arm tighter.
Orion's lower lip jutted out, and then he flipped over on his stomach, flopping down on the lumpy cushions.
"Can we go to the beach?" he said, dragging out each syllable.
"No," Gunnar said. "Come on bud, we have a show tonight, you know that."
"But I wanna go to the beach!"
Gunnar sighed. "Well, tough. We all have to do things we don't want to do."
Orion shrieked into the cushions. Apparently it was loud enough to even grab Scarlett's attention, because she slipped a bud out of her ear and looked their way.
"What're you boys doin' over there?"
Gunnar rolled his eyes. "Orion seems to think this is perfect beach weather." He gestured to the pounding rain, beating loudly against the windows.
"Hang in there just a few more minutes, baby," Scarlett said. "We'll take a break soon. I promise."
Orion lifted his face out of the cushions, tears streaking his cheeks. "But I'm bored," he wailed.
Gunnar sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. In and out in and out, in and out. Better to do that than something he'd regret later.
Scarlett sighed, opened her arms to her son. Orion darted off the couch next to Gunnar and crawled into his mother's lap, tucking the dark crown of his head under her chin. Scarlett wrapped herself around him, rocking them a bit as she pressed a kiss into his messy hair.
Gunnar ran his hands across his face, sighed into them. He caught Scarlett's eye over Orion's whimpers, and shot her a look. Scarlett shrugged one shoulder, and went back to ducking her face into her son's dark hair, trying to quiet him.
It was gonna be a long ride to Sunset Sounds.
II.
Gunnar had wanted to drive straight through all the way to the showground, but one thing he and Scarlett had both learned over the past six years was that traveling with a child meant you had to be flexible.
Well, Scarlett had learned it, anyway. Sometimes she thought Gunnar had skipped that part of parenting. Hadn't read that chapter in the nonexistent manual titled "How To Travel Across The Country With A Small, Restless Child Who Doesn't Care About Career Plans".
They finally decided to stop for lunch, instead of just snacking on the chicken salad and biscuits she'd made and had sitting in the mini fridge. Gunnar had rolled his eyes, but the longer they sat there the closer Orion was getting to "meltdown mode", and both of them knew it. It would probably do everybody some good, she figured, to let them all stretch their legs a little, and if Orion had some French fries in his system and a little space to blow off steam maybe he'd settle down and be less likely to rile up Gunnar before the show tonight.
And give her a chance to breathe. Which would be nice, considering she felt like she'd been that damn cartoon Roadrunner lately, runnin' around so fast from one place to the next that she was just a blur in the distance.
Orion shifted in her arms, and peered up at her. "How much longer?" He was still sniffling a little.
She ignored the grunt Gunnar made from the couch across from them. "A few more minutes, bud."
"But how many more minutes?"
"You need to stop pesterin'," Gunnar snapped. "She's trying to get work done."
Orion pushed his face into Scarlett's neck. She narrowed her eyes at Gunnar over her son's dark head, and he looked out the window instead.
"I wanna get off the bus," he mumbled. His breath was hot on her skin, his fingers scratching at her collarbone.
She sighed, ran her fingers over his forehead. It always soothed him, even as an infant. It mesmerized him, a surefire way to get a cranky baby who didn't want to go down closing his eyes. Sure enough, he stopped twitching after a moment, head against her shoulder, and the frustrated tears on his face starting to dry.
Scarlett looked out the window, saw the rain slowly coming to a stop. She could see the water – the Intracoastal, not the ocean, as she'd been taught the first time she came through here – and it looked like molten silver. Above it, the sky was slowly turning from grey to slate to the barest baby blue, far over the other side of the bridge, off the mainland.
Orion shifted in her lap, and Scarlett adjusted her hold on him, keeping his scrawny elbows from digging into her stomach. She still had to go through the emails their agent sent them, check out the mp3s recently downloaded on her laptop. She needed more time with the rough cuts Shelley had sent them, and she still wasn't sure if the second verse to the song she and Gunnar had been trying to write for the past three weeks needed tweaking or not.
But Orion was needing her. And he had a way of always pushing what he wanted to the forefront. Always demanding her, because she was his mama and that was her job. To making everything about him, always about him.
She sighed, stroked the back of her son's dark hair.
A lot like his daddy on that front, she thought grimly. She shifted Orion in her lap, pressed a light kiss to the side of his face. A whole, whole lot like his daddy.
Orion was sometimes so much like Avery that it seemed like God had the sickest sense of humor ever. There were still moments when Scarlett found herself doing a double-take, when an expression crossed his small face or he took a certain tone with her. If she hadn't endured nineteen hours of hard labor in an un-air-conditioned hospital, she might think her son had come directly from Avery, like that one myth about Zeus she half-remembered from high school.
Across the couch, Gunnar had his earbuds back in. He leaned against the bench and closed his eyes, tapping his foot to some melody she couldn't hear. Orion shifted again, frustrated tears staining her shoulder, and she went back to rocking the two of them, almost in time to the beat of Gunnar's unheard song.
They decided a while ago, not to have one of their own. Scarlett was done having babies, and Gunnar agreed that one was enough for two full-time touring musicians and songwriters.
Sometimes, Scarlett wondered if there was more to it than just that. If the real reason Gunnar didn't want to have his own baby with her was because he thought he'd love it more than Orion. That it would ultimately cement the wedge between him and the boy; a child fathered by him, instead of a constant reminder of Avery, of Scarlett's choices. That if he had a child of his own, he'd never look at Orion the same way again.
III.
Gunnar had grown up in Texas, so he knew a thing or two about what it meant to feel the heat. But the first time he stepped off a tour bus into the Florida sunshine, it was like nothing else he'd ever felt before. A mix between being smothered in wet blankets and buried under mounds of rotting fruit. Like drowning while standing up, the air tasting like salt and dead grass and decay, and fish. Fish everywhere.
He was so ready for summer to end. Already he longed for October in Tennessee – the way the autumn scattered at their feet, an embarrassment of riches. The sky was a cloudless, solid shade of blue, and it was comforting, how uniform it was, while the world underneath it kept changing, the season like a flame surrounding them; a world made of jewels and fire.
Here, it seemed as if everything around them was slightly smeared, the heat making the world run like wet paint. He could see the heat waves, shimmering off the blacktop. Even the rain hadn't cooled things down much.
"Where's the A/C," Scarlett mumbled.
She was leaning against the side of the bus, fanning herself with a legal pad she'd been scratching lyrics on – and then scratching them off right after – for the past half an hour. They were stopped at a gas station that sold sunflowers, not far from the bridge that took them over the water and officially off the mainland.
Gunnar always hated bridges. Had an even bigger aversion to large bodies of water. They made him suspicious. Maybe it came from growing up in the fiery dry plains of middle Texas, of never seeing the ocean until he was twenty-five and couldn't make himself go much deeper than the waist because Jason had forced Gunnar to watch Jaws when he was seven and it'd damn near traumatized him for life. Also, he'd never learned how to swim, and the current had been rough that first day, with warnings for rip tides posted from every empty lifeguard tower and ominous red flags sticking out of the sand.
He yawned and stretched back, feeling his back creak and trying not to wince when something popped. It didn't hurt, but Gunnar was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen. He ran his fingers through his hair, curling into thick horns against his forehead, and yawned again. Back about ten minutes ago he'd been almost as ready as Orion to get out of the bus and stretch his restless legs, but the post-storm heat seemed to zap it all out of him, and now he sat on the bottom step of the bus and felt ready for a nap.
Damn it, maybe he really was getting old.
No. He refused to entertain that notion. He was only thirty-one. Still in shape, still had all hair in the right places, could still bend the way he was supposed to. And for now, could deal with that sore back and aching knee joints with a couple of Advil. Maybe a whiskey shot.
"Rye!" Scarlett's sharp voice cut across the buzzing, lazy afternoon. "No runnin' in the street. Come here, now."
Gunnar cracked an eye open, saw the small, dark-haired shape that was wobbling on the curbside, spindly arms held out like a pinwheel. Orion's hair was in dire need of a haircut, bangs almost covering his eyes and curling on the back of his neck. Gunnar figured it was only a matter of time before the boy found himself underneath the mercy of Scarlett's scissors, out back behind the bus.
Gunnar ran his hands through his own hair, now down to the nape of his neck. He was one to talk.
As if she read his mind, he heard Scarlett murmur, "He really needs a haircut."
She had an aversion to letting Orion's hair get too long, too shaggy. When he could officially tuck it behind his ears, it was a signal that Scarlett had let it go too long. She always said it looked neater trimmed and made him look less like a hobo, but Gunnar figured it had something to do with the way he was already too familiar to look at sometimes, and who Scarlett really saw when he watched her double-take at her own child when he thought she couldn't see it.
It was like the grand cosmic joke in the chaos that was their lives, how much that boy looked like his father.
IV.
"Look who finally made it off the tour bus!"
Scarlett smiled into the phone, as if her best friend could somehow hear her, thousands of miles away. She drew her legs up on the edge of the fountain, and rested the phone against her shoulder, turned towards the sun. "Please, tell me you have something incredibly dull to tell me."
"What?" Zoey teased, and Scarlett smiled, curling a length of hair around her finger. She could see Zoey's face as clear as day, the mischievous grin tugging her features. "You mean you don't wanna hear about the scandal at the church bake sale?"
"Oh god no," Scarlett groaned. "I want to hear something so phenomenally boring that it puts me to sleep right here on the concrete."
"But then you'd miss talking to me," Zoey said, "and that sort of defeats the purpose of the whole 'planned best friend time' you and I have scheduled."
"I know," Scarlett sighed. "Believe me. I miss talkin' to you, too."
"Where are you, anyway? You sound like you're blowing a wind machine into the phone, or something."
"Sorry." Scarlett adjusted the cell on her shoulder. "I'm at a marina. Right on the ocean. The breeze is pretty strong." She looked out at the water, the slow roll of clouds on the horizon. "Sure is pretty, though."
"You guys make it to the show yet?"
"Nah. We had to stop. Someone needed to get off the bus before he drove everyone crazy."
"Uh-huh." She could hear Zoey rolling her eyes, even across state lines. "And would that someone be the six-year-old, or the one who likes to act like the six-year-old?"
Scarlett snorted. "Both."
"I can tell," Zoey said drily. "How are you holding up?"
Scarlett closed her eyes, smelled the breeze off the water. It smelled like fish, and salt, and the tangy zing in the air that meant an oncoming storm. Nothing like Nashville.
"I'm holdin'," she said. "Just not sure if it's up or down."
"Well, relax," Zoey said. "Remember, just a few more weeks, and you finally get to relax."
"Yeah," Scarlett said, "because with a six-year-old startin' first grade and Shelley beatin' down me and Gunnar's door for new songs every ten minutes, relaxin' is the first thing I'll be able to do once I step foot back in Nashville."
"And come see me!" Zoey added. "Don't forget that part. Don't you dare think about backing out on it."
"No, trust me. It's the one thing I've been looking forward to for months."
"Only a few more weeks," her friend replied.
"Yeah." She wished she could see Zoey's smile in person, instead of having to imagine it.
"How are you?" Scarlett said. "I haven't talked to you in so long. Did you guys pick a nursery color yet?"
"Yep. Isaiah and I picked green."
"Seriously?" Scarlett smiled. "Green? Like, St. Patrick's Day green, or Key Lime Pie green?"
"Neither, smartass," Zoey replied. "It's barely green. You can't even really tell what color it is. Well, technically, it's called 'slate green' – or at least, that's what the paint can at Home Depot said. But it looks really nice. Very easily could be a boy or girl's room."
"And you're still going on about not wantin' to know? I mean, isn't the curiosity killin' you, even a little?"
"I told you, it's more fun this way!" Zoey insisted. "And besides, I know my parents, and Isaiah knows his. We know if anyone says anything blue or pink, this kid will be outfitted into some 1950s idea of gender norms before you can say 'sexism'."
Scarlett rolled her eyes. "You know it's gonna happen anyway though. I mean, it's not like you can keep it hidden once that kid pops out?"
"It's the principle of the thing," Zoey said firmly. "Okay? Come on, you know I worked really hard to try and get away from the whole idea of a preacher's daughter. I love my family, I love the way I grew up. But that doesn't mean I don't think it can change. Why repeat our parents' mistakes, you know?"
Scarlett looked up, saw Gunnar and Orion standing by the water's edge. Gunnar had picked up the boy by his midsection, holding him over the railing so he could see better. Sea gulls dotted the ground where they stood, lining the sides of the waterfront like little white flags. Orion pointed at something down in the water, and Gunnar peered down to see what he was looking at.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "I know that."
"Anyway, I meant to ask you," Zoey was saying, and Scarlett looked away from her boys, the wind tousling their hair. "Do you think Gunnar would feel left out if I didn't name him the godfather?"
Scarlett took her free hand, lapped it in the fountain's tinny-smelling water.
"It's just," Zoey continued, "Isaiah has been dropping all these hints about wanting Titus and Peter to be named godfather, and since I'm already naming you and my sister as godmother…I just feel like, Isaiah should get his picks, and I should get mine."
"What happened to 'outdated gender norms'?" Scarlett replied.
"It was our decision," Zoey said. "Look, I'm not saying that I don't love Gunnar, because you know I do. But I just don't want him to get all weird about this. Like we left him out on purpose. Because we didn't."
She watched Gunnar put Orion down, and watched the boy keep reaching over the rail. Then Gunnar picked him up once more, setting her son on his hips. Orion wrapped his spidery legs around Gunnar's middle and looked out over the water, his dark head almost reaching the top of Gunnar's own.
"Gunnar's a big boy," Scarlett said. "He can handle it."
V.
Orion never called Gunnar "Daddy" or "Dad". He never called anyone by that name, actually, unless you counted the mangled "Duh-duh-duh" sound he'd bubbled when he started learning to talk and couldn't make out all the syllables of "Deacon". Which made sense, given that Deacon was as close to a dad as Scarlett had ever known, and her son would feel that same sense of safety, security, love.
Why he never latched onto the word with Gunnar, though, was another story. Scarlett couldn't explain it to anyone for the life of her, but for some reason, no one had ever gotten around to labeling Gunnar as "Daddy" in front of the little boy. Even as a baby, when Gunnar had been there, helping her feed him and change him and rock him to sleep when he cried, neither of them had ever started calling Gunnar "Daddy". Even Deacon had been in on it, as if this was something they'd all planned out and discussed before Orion had ever been born.
Gunnar didn't know why it didn't bother him, honestly. He'd known that boy his whole life. He was as good as Gunnar's own; it didn't matter who his real father was.
Well.
"Real" as in, blood-related. As in, the part that helped create him. But it was just a label. It didn't matter who Orion's "real" father was, because he had so many grown men in his life who loved him and treated him like one of their own. Not just Gunnar and Deacon, but Will, Davis, Zoey's husband Isaiah. All of them, worthier men of the title than Orion's own shitbag excuse of a father.
In Gunnar's ever-so-humble opinion, that was.
The whole world was filled with bad fathers. Gunnar never had anyone to call "Daddy", but he had Jason. And that was a thousand times better than the man who should have had that title; the piece-of-shit, drug-addicted scumbag who beat his pregnant wife and older son until he broke their bones, then disappeared in the night, never to be heard from again, and good riddance. Scarlett's dad had left his little girl, but she had Deacon, and he loved her more than anyone. Orion would never be a part of his biological father, but he was better off for it, as far as everyone was concerned.
Titles didn't matter, and blood didn't mean a damn thing. If he'd learned anything from Scarlett since first falling in love with her, it was that.
Still. It didn't stop the whispers, the rumors, the second glances. They'd both debated on what it would mean to keep the secret of Orion's parentage from everyone before and after he was born, but as it turned out, it never mattered. Because everyone seemed to know that he wasn't Gunnar's.
That was something they were going to have to approach with Orion, someday.
He didn't know how that was going to turn out. All he wanted Orion to know – to make sure he spent his entire life knowing – was that titles didn't matter. Blood didn't mean a damn thing.
VI.
For the last two and a half years, life had been – not easy, no, or even simple – but…content. Scarlett really couldn't think of a better word for it, even with all the songwriting gifts she had in her arsenal, the ones she came to Nashville with and the ones she'd cultivated with a publishing deal and the rhythms she'd found hiding in the strings of Gunnar's Gibson.
Maybe content wasn't the most sophisticated word to use, or the one she would have picked if she were writing a song about what her life had become. But it was the only one she had. And she was lucky to have even one steady thing to call it, given how shaky things had been before they reached this lull.
But no. Here they were, all three of them – her, her son, and her man at her side – and they had all survived it. Right now, she felt as if she'd earned a little bit of exaggeration. Especially given all they'd gone through, in the past six years.
First – and most mundane, as awful as it was to admit – Deacon had fallen off the wagon, this time not for booze but for the pills he'd been given for that hand injury he got in that accident with Rayna. It had happened quietly this time, no screaming or fighting or throwing things around, breaking furniture and scarin' the shit outta her. Instead he just packed his things and went to detox, sending her letters every week, asking about her and her son, her music. He didn't ask about music, about Gunnar, about even Rayna, who by this time was hot and heavy with Liam McGuinnis, and had been for months – or so the magazines reported, and while Scarlett wasn't one to give those rags the time of day or any moment of her time, she wasn't totally blind to the way that man looked at her boss, the way they barely let themselves touch each other in public but always seemed to be looking at each other, even when their eyes were elsewhere. She knew that kind of pull, had felt it before many times. And she stayed quiet, grateful Deacon didn't ask.
Then, around that same time: Maddie Conrad had gotten into a car accident before she even had her permit. Apparently she'd stolen her father's car, tried to drive it, made it halfway down the block before running a stop light and getting pulled over, then hitting a mail box when she'd tried to come to a stop. She'd been saved from traffic court and getting her driving privileges suspended by what had no doubt been Teddy Conrad's influence, because the mayor's daughter crashing a car she wasn't licensed to drive never made the headlines. The only reason Scarlett knew about it at all was because Rayna had gotten the call when she was having a label meeting with her and Bucky Dawes, and Scarlett had offered to drive an incredibly shaken Rayna to the ER.
Then, another domino. Will was outed to the world by Layla Grant, after she caught him and his publicist in a dressing room. Although the sources always said it had been an "anonymous tip" and she never owned up to it, they all knew it had been her. Edgehill had promptly dropped him, the country was in an uproar over the "gay cowboy superstar", and the internet had all but exploded with some of the most vile, hateful comments Scarlett could never have imagined.
It had all culminated with Will disappearing for three days leaving no clue to where he'd gone, and ending up in a motel just outside the city with a gun in his mouth. Gunnar had been the one to take that phone call, and Scarlett could barely distinguish a word through the speakers. She'd never heard somebody cry so hard, or been so scared for another person before. She'd been seven months pregnant when they pulled into that empty parking lot on a snowy January night, and ignored Gunnar screaming at her as she raced across the ice and banged on the door to Room 401, yelling Will's name so loudly she thought her own heart would break. He'd been sitting on the floor when they went in, and she'd gone to wrap her arms around him, rocking him like he was so small, almost as small as the child she'd be having soon. He'd cried, and cried, and cried and cried, and Gunnar had sat down on the floor beside them while she rocked, and crooned, some nonsense that she couldn't even make out or understand, just kept making it because it kept her from crying, kept him holding onto her, and even seemed to calm the baby kickin' inside. Gunnar had been grey-faced, gripping Will's shoulder, and tried very, very hard not to let out tears of his own.
He'd failed, but then again, so had she.
They couldn't remember how long they'd all sat there on that cigarette-stained motel floor, rocking and crying and crooning, listening to the howl of the wind outside. But they finally got Will standing, leaning on the two of them for support, and together they'd walked out of that room, and took him to the home she shared with Deacon. He'd spend the next few weeks sleeping in the master bedroom – Deacon was still finishing rehab – and when her uncle came home, he transferred to the couch without complaint. He was facing a lot of fire from all sides, with his outing still very much in the public eye, but Deacon hadn't complained about keeping him in their home. From one broken person to the next, he'd offered shelter.
Will had moved out right before she had Orion. Moved in with Gunnar, who had buried the hatchet "What If I Was Willing" had created and promised Scarlett he wouldn't leave him alone. He'd stayed awhile, paying rent with the money he had saved away and from selling his bike, but once the funds ran dry he moved on, not wanting to borrow money to live or stay in the center of the shitstorm much longer. He'd stayed long enough to meet her son, and had even come to the baptism, although he'd acted like the walls would fall in if he stepped inside a chapel.
Then when Orion was a few weeks old, he left. Packed what little clothing and dignity he still carried with him, and moved out – some town right in the middle of Tornado Alley, some type of anonymous, brutal work that opened up. He'd hugged them both, wished her best of luck with the baby. Tried to give his favorite guitar to Gunnar, but Gunnar had refused to take it, and finally agreed to take it on the road. He didn't know where he was going with this, or what came next, but he left that night on a bus bound for Little Rock, and that had been that.
He lived in Atlanta now, of all places. Right in the middle of the city, with a condo and that same guitar. And he had Davis, which if Scarlett had to reckon, was the one saving grace that had really helped steady Will's life out and make him feel like breathin', feel like his life was still allowed to go on.
Davis. Sweet, steady Davis. Who loved Will for years; could calm the storm that he was. Who was patient and kind but also firm, and never took Will's anger or struggle to heart. He knew it was always more about Will needing to love Will than Will failing to love Davis, anyway.
The city had been hard for Country Boy Will, at first. What had been harder was the anger and hate people felt towards his love for Davis. As if it was any of their business.
For a while, the tango their lives had become seemed nonstop; then, just as sudden as it started, it came to a grinding halt. Zoey married Isaiah, and moved to Birmingham for her job. Deacon sold the house, moved into a smaller place – still strung out on Rayna James, but what else could you do about that except shake your head. She and Gunnar had their own home on the outskirts of Franklin – close enough to the city to where they didn't have too much trouble getting from A to B, but far enough away so Orion could have a yard and neighborhood kids, trying to create that balance between having touring parents and wanting to create something solid for him to come home to. She broke away from Edgehill, Gunnar from Jeannie. Rayna couldn't offer them a deal, but they ended up signing with an independent label called Little Tree Records, and scored a publishing deal. The biggest break had come when Tim McGraw had cut one of their songs, "Believe Me Now", as a single to promote a Greatest Hits album he was releasing, and it had charted at number 4. Even got performed at the ACMs that year. Earned them a lot of buzz, royalty checks, and suddenly they were seeing a different side of things.
They toured a lot, played a lot, wrote more than either of the first two. Still played the Bluebird, but the venues kept getting bigger, and with it their audience more familiar with their music. The Corbin West tour had been big news, completely out of the blue, and they took it, and didn't try to let themselves think about the specifics.
Right now, run-of-the-mill was what she lived for. Waking up on a bus a thousand miles away from the day before, whether it be New Orleans or Santa Fe or Canton, or even New York City. Show after show after show, song after song after song. They'd been rollin' nonstop, trying to make it look like they hadn't broken a sweat, like they never missed a beat. And in the midst of all of it, they hit milestone after milestone, until they stopped feeling like milestones and started feeling like something that passed for normal – their normal, anyway.
Ever since that string of events that hadn't seemed to stop rolling – the "Avery Apocalypse", as Zoey had nicknamed it – the Big and the Bad, all the ceremony and storm, everything seemed content to leave the two of them alone. Which suited Scarlett damn fine.
The last she'd cared to hear about him had been when Orion was a few weeks old. She'd heard through a few of the musicians from the tour she kept in touch with that Avery had moved out to L.A. when they played their last stop, was now working with some famous producer. Apparently a guy who had worked with Destiny's Child, back in the day.
The more things change, she'd thought, watching the baby rest in the warmth of Deacon's arms. The more they stay the same.
She'd stopped caring, right then, Stopped giving him any more of her time, any more of her thought. Even any more of her spite – he wasn't worth it, even if was all uncharitable.
She had a beautiful baby son. It didn't matter that he had Avery in his eyes, in his blood, in the look of his future. He belonged to her, and her alone. The horse's ass who happened to allow him to be didn't matter anymore.
She'd told him years ago – she wasn't his woman.
VII.
Gunnar liked this bus.
It was the biggest they'd ever been able to afford, and so far beyond anything they ever thought possible, when they'd been writing songs in that bright little living room of the first house they shared. They'd looked in places like these before, when they'd first started touring. Imagined what it would be like, when they got this far.
They'd had their eyes on a bus like this for years. When they'd finally been able to afford it, it was more ceremonious than when they'd bought their first home.
It made him smile a little, thinking about it. The first time an artist cut one of their songs. Their first tour together. Their first time playing the Opry together, their first CMA nomination. Their very first win, that same year.
And buying this bus. Oh, the things that he counted as major markers in his and Scarlett's life.
But it was damn comfortable. He closed his eyes, leaned back against the cushions. It was comfortable, and warm, and he could feel the road thrumming like a livewire, coursing underneath him. Everything about it felt like being home – more than their little house in Franklin did, Gunnar had always felt.
He turned up the volume on U2's "Drowning Man". Off their most overrated album, if you asked him, but this was one hell of a good song, buried underneath lesser hits that had taken on a life of their own in pop culture. He always loved travel days the most – the roll of the wheels underneath him, the hum of the highway, the way his body felt like it was being rocked by the passing of state lines and mile markers.
Someone was tapping his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and Scarlett took the end of her braid and tickled his face.
"Wake up!" she trilled, smiling.
He groaned. "Come on, I was just about to go to sleep."
"Well, we have two more songs to write, and we got nothin' to show for the past week and a half, and that one verse is still givin' me problems, so…" she gestured for him to move. "Time to get to work, partner."
"Ugh," was his reply. But he grabbed his guitar from where he'd strapped it down, and sat beside Scarlett on their usual writing bench. Might as well work while Orion wasn't crawling all over them, complaining that he was bored and begging Gunnar to watch Horton Hears A Who for the billionth time.
Orion was sleeping in their bedroom, the door shut tight. A shame he hadn't been able to do that last night when Gunnar and Scarlett were trying to, but he'd been feverish and miserable all night long, which translated to Gunnar and Scarlett being miserable along with him. But whatever, the boy was asleep now, knocked out with Tylenol and wrapped in Gunnar's hoodie that hung past his knees, and Gunnar had two extra cups of coffee this morning to get him going. Also plenty of Airborne, because the last thing he felt like dealing with right now was catching whatever Orion had picked up, somewhere between Pensacola and Mobile.
Scarlett was biting the end of her pen – a habit she'd picked up over the years and Gunnar hated, because it grossed him the hell out – and staring intently at the legal pad, gesturing towards the middle of the chorus.
"Do you think we should change this?" she said. "Like, instead of it being 'when you close your eyes and dream/ I hope you feel my peace', we change it to, 'when you close your eyes to rest/remember I wish you the best'?"
"I dunno. Sounds kinda awkward. How many people say 'close your eyes to rest'?"
"Then how about 'when you lay your head to rest' instead?"
Gunnar strummed a few chords, trying to get the strings to tune. "We could try that. But I still like the first way better."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, let's put it to actual music and see which one ends up sounding better."
"Which will still be my way."
She smacked his arm. "When are you gonna learn I'm always right?"
They'd almost finished the bridge and vowed to tackle that godawful verse they couldn't seem to get right when Scarlett's phone buzzed with a new text message.
"It's Maddie," she said. "She wants to know if we'll be back in time for her showcase."
"Didn't we just go to that over Christmas?"
"That wasn't for school, that had to do with a music club. This is some big important thing for graduation." Scarlett sighed. "We should really be there."
"When is it?"
"Around the end of the summer."
Gunnar looked at her, raised an eyebrow.
"I know," she answered, to his unspoken question. "But we'll…figure somethin' out. We need to go. I wanna see her, anyway."
Gunnar nodded, strummed another chord. They saw Maddie a few times a year – had for a few years now, ever since Rayna had tentatively started allowing Deacon to spend more time with his biological daughter, and Scarlett had wanted to get closer to her newfound cousin. They usually tried to get together around Christmas, even if it was just for a few hours in between her family meals and spending time with her sister, who would be starting college this fall. Samford, if Gunnar remembered correctly – he'd had to sign a congratulations card Scarlett sent out to her not too long ago, as well as a graduation card.
Maddie now went to Vanderbilt School of Music, right in the city. Gunnar figured that with her kind of talent, she could have gotten in anywhere, but she'd wanted to stay in Nashville, and Vanderbilt wasn't exactly for slackers.
(Plus, if you really wanted to know what he thought, he figured Teddy Conrad's considerable connections had something to do with that acceptance letter. But he kept that rather ungenerous opinion to himself, and signed the congratulations card Scarlett sent out years ago, when she first got that letter.)
Gunnar remembered both girls well. But for some reason, only as they had been years ago – carrying baby Orion backstage while Scarlett was in soundcheck, putting gel in his dark hair to give him a Mohawk. Maddie used to love tickling his chubby baby belly, blowing raspberries against his skin, and Daphne had loved it when Scarlett let the baby sit in her lap while the little girl fed him a bottle. Both had sung to him, helped lull him to sleep in his stroller backstage while Scarlett wowed the Rayna James crowd and Gunnar plowed through songs they'd written years ago, sitting in that tiny living room they'd once shared.
He was about to pick up the notes to the chorus when it suddenly hit him –
"Damn," he said, and Scarlett over at him.
"What? Something wrong?"
"Just…" he shook his head. "Just realized Maddie is graduating college soon."
Scarlett sighed. "Yeah. Tell me about it."
He groaned, which turned into a laugh. Scarlett looked over at him and raised her eyebrows, like he'd lost his mind.
"Shit, babe." He groaned again, sitting back on the couch. "We're old."
"Hey." She poked him with the edge of her boot. "Speak for yourself."
"Doesn't make it any less true," he argued, poking her back. "Oh my god, wasn't she, like, twelve yesterday?"
Scarlett nodded, way too calm for Gunnar's liking. "Like Orion was just born last week." She smiled at him. "We are officially grown-ups, old-timer."
"Guess so." He ran his hands over his face. "Wonder when the hell that happened."
Scarlett sighed. "Beats me."
He watched her fiddle with the edge of her pencap, chewing on it the way he hated. He didn't quite know when she'd stepped so fully into this person – this calm, careful girl who didn't take shit from anyone, least of all him. She took to being an artist, a writer, a mother, a wouldn't-be-his-wife with a grace he can't exactly say surprises him, but at the same time leaves him wondering. When did she become this person? The girl he fell in love with at the Bluebird, who had him from the first time she ever sang "Ring of Fire" in that sweaty nightclub…she had somehow managed to effortlessly step into this role.
What wasn't as easy to define was exactly the hell Gunnar had become, over the years. He had the music he wanted, the woman he loved, a boy he'd raised from the day he'd been born. But he didn't have Scarlett's ease. Watching her, it made him feel like he was some stupid kid, trying to look all cool and collected, like he actually had some idea of what the fuck he was supposed to be doing, when really he was hollow inside.
Standing next to Scarlett made him feel like everyone knew it, too.
He doesn't think of himself as a goddamn saint or something – because God knows, there have been days when he's really struggled to get over all the water under the bridge, to forget the past and be who that little boy he loved needed him to be. The jealousy he couldn't help feeling sometimes, when he looked at Scarlett with Orion and saw what he'd never have with her, what they would never have together. Even the worst memories he'd never shared with anyone, and would only have told Jason, if he was still alive – like feeling that baby move inside Scarlett, and getting hit with jealousy so wide he thought his heart would burst.
Days like that, and it makes him wonder how Teddy Conrad survived it, all those years. How he could have looked at little Maddie and not seen Deacon. Seen it in her smile, in her eyes, in the lilt of her voice and the way she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him through her hair. Looked at this child he was supposed to love, and had stopped seeing everything he hated.
Jesus, that man must have really fuckin' loved Rayna James like the world depended on it. And must have loved Maddie even more.