Little random one-shot, just really felt like writing this one and it's in the vein of something I'm wanting to explore in a couple of other stories soon... I've never figured out whether I think Rayna would have cheated on Teddy or not, and this story isn't about whether she does or doesn't, it's about Teddy being driven crazy by the thought of it.
In other news, I miss the absolute hell out of Rayna and Deacon. Just saying. Long live fanfic.
Teddy doesn't tell her he's coming.
It's an unremarkable Tuesday evening when he steps off the hour long flight. Chicago, blustery and grey-skied, welcomes him with a bite, wind whipping at his neatly-pressed suit jacket as his feet hit the tarmac, and he hoists his overnight bag over his shoulder and pops an Altoid.
He takes a cab from the airport, headed to the hotel first so he can drop his things and freshen up, and he sits in the back seat evading the driver's attempts to make small talk for the handful of miles. They pass houses and self-aware coffee shops, manicured squares of city parks, people walking neat dogs and joggers in lycra bustling through them.
He wonders if he's doing the right thing. He wonders what her reaction will be if she finds out. She'd called him that morning and he'd been careful not to drop any hints, nothing out of the ordinary to give her any warning. He doesn't want her to have any warning. She'd be ready for him then, careful, and he needs truth, not caution. He'll call in a while, tell her he's stuck at work and has had to get Jenny to watch the girls for the evening - which is true - so she'll be the one to take Rayna's nightly pre-show call to wish them sweet dreams. He's told Jenny, and the girls, with a twinge of guilt, that he's working out of town and may need to crash in a hotel, that he'll be back the next day if so. He has it all planned out, right down to the jewellery boxed and tied with ribbon in his pocket that he'll gift Rayna with if she sees him, his excuse for the impromptu trip. As though jewellery explains the out of character spontaneity.
They stop at traffic lights and Teddy does a double-take at the sight of her face on a newstand at the side of the road; a blown up front page, larger than life, her red hair fiery, face milky smooth. It doesn't really look like her, like someone has taken an eraser and blurred her features. He frowns. She's prettier in real life.
Rayna Jaymes Returns! reads the headline all the same, a splash of declarative black font on a dirty white background. Her tour is making waves in every town it rolls through, the collective excitement that she's back after her hiatus evident in droves. She's been holed up in Nashville for too long, if her fans are to be listened to, no touring, no album, just diapers and a lot of well-intentioned and questionably-executed attempts at cooking home dinners, something he loves about her. There is a lot he loves about her. Catch her sold out show if you can, the byline adds. People have missed her.
Teddy knows the feeling.
Daphne is eighteen months old now. Their second baby, his first, though he doesn't look at it that way. He loves the hell out of both girls, even if one of them is a daily reminder that Rayna is eternally tied to another man. He would know it anyway, but those dark eyes that are neither his nor his wife's that peer up at him when he's reading bedtime stories and making hot cocoas on the stove, they don't let him forget.
It startles him how deeply he can love Claybourne's child, how he can be her father without question or condition. It isn't her fault, though, and if anything he loves her more for the misfortune of her genes - half of them, anyway. He's never felt so protective, so determined to shelter another human from what could be, not even with Rayna, and he knows now that they have Daphne too that it's something specific to Maddie. It's different with Daphne - the natural protection a father feels for his kids is at manageable levels, reserved for scraped knees and keeping her safe from the woes of the world. It's just different.
Rayna is different with Daphne too. She's taken time off - at Teddy's persistent urging, but she'd agreed it would be best all the same - and she's stayed completely away from music, from her other world, the one Teddy very definitely doesn't fit in to. She's let herself be a mother, not a performer, not an artist; a woman, a wife. He's enjoyed it immensely, and there is a part of him, a big one, that wishes she would give it all up and stay home. There's another part of him that is mesmerised by her as Rayna Jaymes though, that watches from the side of the stage in awe at who she becomes. It makes him desire her, even more than he already does - she's beautiful, so very beautiful, and he wants so badly to possess her but he knows he never can. It drives him to near insanity sometimes.
It had been another story after Maddie's birth. He'd heard her quietly cry herself to sleep at nights, and he'd been well aware that he wasn't the one who could comfort her, that the only person who could was in a sterile room at a far-away rehab centre with no clue he'd even become a father. Rayna had loved Teddy the best she could during those months that followed, but she'd been distant, distracted, exhausted. She'd been back in the studio by the time Maddie was two months old, on tour six months later. Teddy had known why, though she'd never said it and he'd never pushed her to. He hadn't wanted to hear her admit that being on the road had made her feel closer to Deacon, even though he hadn't been there with her.
Yes, it's simpler with Daphne. It's been simpler all round while Rayna has been on her break, while she's been at home, on weekends away in the country, on the occasional trip to Europe, a family of four, happy and carefree and together. It's been simpler, the truth of it is, while she's been away from Deacon.
Her comeback tour kicked off three weeks ago. It's a short one, only three months, again on Teddy's insistence - any longer would have been too much separation for the girls to deal with, he'd argued, and she hadn't disagreed, and neither of them had acknowledged out loud that he'd meant for him too. There's no new album; it's a chance to reacquaint herself with her fans, to settle back into working life. Teddy knows she won't be taking any more breaks, not for the foreseeable future anyway.
As the driver pulls onto the street where his hotel is, he remembers the evening he'd told Rayna he wanted to have more kids, a whole brood of them, the more the better. He remembers her face, the shock she'd tried to reel in quickly. Her smile had been tight, apologetic almost.
'I think two is enough for me, Teddy,' she'd said, her voice that honeyed lilt that she uses when she wants to soften a blow. 'I don't think I could handle all the sleepless nights all over again. Or the explosive diapers.'
That's what Rayna does when she's letting him down easily - that injection of gentle humour, the mitigating. She's never blunt, never puts her foot down outright - not with him, anyway - but she's as far from a pushover as they come. He'd known right away there would be no persuading her, no cajoling that would get her to eventually relent.
He'd wondered, he wonders now, if it would be different had she married Deacon. Had the guy not let drink swallow him up and had he not pissed away the best thing the sorry son of a bitch had ever had, pushed her so far she'd eventually broken. Would she have told him no? Or would she have filled a house to the rafters with his dark-eyed children, a chaotic existence of music and the kind of love, the deep, deep kind, that she just can't find for Teddy?
The driver eyes him in the rearview mirror as he looks up at the hotel, clearly wondering why he hasn't made a move to get out, and Teddy clears his throat, holds out a fifty and grabs his bag. The lobby is cool and dark; it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. He knows Rayna is staying in the hotel directly across from this one, and he's requested a street-facing room so he can see into it. He has a momentary stab of shame. Is he really going to spy on his wife? I can handle it, Teddy, I can be around him.
He steels himself and walks up to the reception desk. He knows she isn't a cheater, that she wouldn't rip their family apart on a whim, and yet… it isn't a whim he's worried about. It isn't some guy on a lonely night during a gruelling tour, a spur of the moment fling that she would regret. It's Deacon, around her 24/7, on her bus, in her hotels. Teddy knows that Rayna's willpower flies clean out the window when it comes to him, her morals not far behind. Or at least it used to be so, before Maddie. He's heard the stories, snippets of them, at least, from people close to her, and he's read the rest in the press. The good, the bad, the downright ugly. Sure, he's taken the rumours and the gossip with a pinch of salt, but he can imagine the truths behind it all.
He'd sat in the den once, on a night not long after Maddie's first birthday, Rayna fast asleep upstairs, and he'd looked at picture after picture on his computer, Rayna and Deacon young and helplessly in love. They were always beside each other, their bodies always close. He'd listened to songs they'd written together, lyrics full of sultry, aching promises, and watched old grainy videos of them singing into each other's eyes, the whole world around them inconsequential. He knows, and he hates that he knows, that even now they still seem to tune everyone else out with just a look - he's seen it for himself. Whatever it was that was between them has left its mark in indelible ink, despite what she tells him. Despite what she tells herself.
Teddy has been collateral damage already in the ballad of Rayna and Deacon. They hadn't been together long when she'd slept with Deacon, the night she'd gotten pregnant with Maddie, and Teddy doesn't know the details, but he isn't risking it again. He juts out his chin with renewed resolve and dings the bell on the mahogany reception desk. He won - he put the ring on her finger, and he wants it to stay there.
'Room 224, sir, just to the left as you come out of the elevator. Breakfast is complimentary and starts at 7am.'
'I won't be staying for breakfast,' Teddy says, politely accepting the keycard and thanking the woman, who's wearing bright red lipstick that stands out from her demur uniform, her own version of anarchism against the hotel's congruence. 'Could you have a morning newspaper sent up?'
His room is quiet, the street noise muted by double-glazed windows. He walks over to them and stares out at the Lincoln Grand, wondering which floor her room is on, what she's doing now. It's 4pm, too early for dinner. She'll be at soundcheck, most likely. he thinks, and he allows himself a laugh at the irony of it. A few years ago he wouldn't have had a clue what touring musicians do with their time - he'd probably have said they stayed in bed all day and rolled out in time to dawdle to the stage and sing a few songs.
He tries to shake the image that comes immediately to mind, of her staying in bed all day. With him. Writing music, hiding from everyone else on the tour even though their whereabouts would be no secret. Teddy knows it's not a far cry from the reality of the past, however hard he now knows musicians work - he's sure they made time to do nothing but each other.
The shower is powerful and hot, steaming up the bathroom. Despite the brevity of the flight he feels the need to get the runway dust and airport smog from his skin. He isn't sure what to do now - he's planned the journey, the logistics so carefully that now the reality of it all is giving him pause, and he considers for a few serious minutes staying put, curtains drawn against whatever he fears it is he might see, or turning around and heading right back to Nashville and sending Jenny home.
He's here, though. He's here and he needs to know.
He curses into the abyss of matte magnolia that all hotel walls of a certain standard are painted with, and it spits the word right back at him, a raised eyebrow of judgement that he scowls at. It's decided. It's been decided since he held out his boarding pass at the security checkpoint with the conscience of a fugitive. He grits his teeth and takes a breath in through his nose.
Several hours of bad television later and he checks his watch for the hundredth time. The show will be getting out soon, and with a lurch of apprehension he sits up and hoists himself off the bed, flicking the red button on the remote. He smoothes clammy hands over his pants and gathers his wallet and keycard from the writing desk. He's wearing an outfit as far from his usual attire as he could find: a scruffy band t-shirt and joggers, a nondescript sports jacket thrown over the top. He's brought sunglasses and he puts them on, a baseball cap completing the look - in for a penny, in for a pound.
He feels ridiculous as he walks back through the lobby, and he's glad it's already dark when he gets out onto the street. He tries to blend in, and flags down a cab, rattling off the address he's memorised.
'The back of the arena,' he tells the driver, who nods without speaking, thankfully, and presses his foot to the pedal with a little too much enthusiasm. They speed off, and Teddy wills him to slow down so that he can put this off for just a little longer to work up enough nerve. He half-hopes he'll be too late, that he'll have missed her coming out, but the show isn't over yet and the chance to kid himself dwindles with every block they drive. His mouth is dry as they pull up and he sees the crowds of fans waiting for her.
They're gaggled around the tall but see-through gates to the backstage parking lot, clutching autograph books, rolled-up posters of her face. Teddy keeps his head down as he walks among them, trying to get a good spot, not too conspicuous, though there are more than enough people there to lend him anonymity. He walks past a girl in a Rayna Jaymes: Until You Kissed Me Tour t-shirt and feels like he's been punched when he notices that the poster in her hands is a giant picture of the two of them. They're sitting on stools, facing each other, knees together, heads leaned in close. It's old, Teddy knows that: she's twenty, twenty-one at most, but he can't help wanting to set light to the glossy paper anyway. It doesn't matter what he sees tonight, or what he doesn't, or what he does about a damn bit of it - he will never, not ever, be able to erase the history she shares with Deacon Claybourne. That asshole is a part of her, for good.
This isn't the first of Rayna's tours that Deacon has been on since his last rehab stint - there were several stints, Teddy doesn't even know how many in all, but Jesus even his own waste-of-space father spent less time trying to crack his twelve steps - and he doesn't know why this one is rattling him so much. Maddie had been two when Rayna had first asked Deacon back, when she'd declared to Teddy in frustration that she'd tried every damn guitar player in Nashville and none were good enough.
He's sober these days, much to Teddy's chagrin, and he knows he shouldn't wish that Deacon drink himself into a state that would give Rayna cause to back away permanently, but he does anyway. He just fucking does. He likes to tell himself the guy is less of a threat the more messed up he is. Rayna keeps them separate as much as she can, knowing Deacon's very presence makes Teddy uncomfortable, and she herself is a self-conscious ball of forced cheer on the rare occasions the two men are in the same room.
She asked him to be her bandleader this time. Deacon, in charge of her entire band, for three months, thousands of people flocking to see her play each night. Teddy has made no secret of his feelings on the matter - too risky, too much responsibility for someone who can barely manage to keep a whiskey bottle out of his mouth. It makes Rayna quiet when he rants. She lets him do it, but she says little and he knows it serves only to push her further away from him, which pisses him off all the more.
'He's better now,' is all she responds with, as though a few measly years of sobriety erases all the damage done. As though that doesn't make Teddy want to scream that he can't get better, once a drunk always a drunk, he'll screw up again, he'll screw her up again. It's the unspoken part that really gets to him though, the way she avoids meeting his eyes as though he won't see that what's in hers looks a whole lot like longing.
Teddy quickly realises his concern that someone might recognise him, his disguise feeble at best, is a wasted worry. No one is paying him so much as a drop of attention - they're all focused intently on the door to the backstage entrance. He knows she's coming before he sees her: the ripple of excitement reaches a fever pitch and he feels a collective swarm as they jostle closer to the gates. A lot of them shout her name, their voices high-pitched, full of urgent adoration; others cheer without words, holding up their posters, lifting onto their tiptoes for the best view, each vying to be seen by her.
Teddy is taller than a lot of them - he can see her clearly over their heads. There she is, his wife, emerging through the door beyond the bars, only a few feet away, her vibrant hair unmistakable. She waves with both hands at the fans and they go batshit crazy. They surge further forwards but he barely even notices, he's too busy staring at her. She's in her stage outfit - he recognises the bejewelled, classic country jacket that had been delivered to their house among a host of others, the one that had been designed specially for her and had cost more than a car. She's wearing skyscraper heels, her legs long and tanned, the skirt she'd picked out to go with the jacket barely more than a belt as far as Teddy thinks. He loses himself in appreciation for a moment, admiring her figure, the swell of her cleavage, the brightness of her smile, before a flash of heat hits him at the realisation that she wears this outfit night after night in front of Deacon fucking Claybourne.
And right as he thinks it, the guy appears. He walks casually out of the door behind Rayna and stands beside her, not obviously too close, but he somehow manages to invade her personal space in a way that is apparently completely natural - to both of them, it seems. It's possessive without him so much as touching her. Teddy frowns. Bucky stands in front of Rayna, saying something and gesturing with his arms, and she's nodding, but Teddy knows that look on her face - she's not listening. A few of the other guys he recognises from her band mill around too, a couple of them smoking cigarettes, one of them waving over at a fan who yells his name. None of them stand anywhere near as close to Rayna as Deacon does.
He realises a little belatedly that the emergence of Deacon - and perhaps, though he is loathe to think it, his proximity to Rayna - has set off a secondary wave of hysteria.
'Ohmygod,' a squat girl closest to him hisses to her friend, 'look at them. Look at how he's looking at her!'
How he's looking at her is too damn much, Teddy thinks with a rush of fury. He hasn't taken his eyes off her. Worse, she keeps glancing up at him after every few words Bucky is spouting. And then he has the nerve to lean into her and say something close to her ear and she laughs, swatting his chest playfully and shaking her head. This is too much for the girl next to Teddy who lets out a shrill, guttural noise, and fans herself, as though the Chicago wind-chill is not enough to freeze some sense into her.
'Did you see that?' she blurts, and Teddy almost replies that he saw it, and he's not fucking happy about it, so if she could shut the hell up he'd appreciate it. 'Oh my God Angela, she still loves him! I told you - I swear they are so getting back together!'
Angela, a tall, bony girl with one long braid dangling over one knobbly shoulder, looks considerably smarter than her friend. Teddy side-eyes her, silently appealing to her sense of decency.
'They areadorable,' Angela says, and Teddy rolls his eyes so far back he makes himself dizzy. Screw you, Angela.
He steers his attention back to where Rayna is now hugging one of her backing singers, and he watches as the little group share a laugh, the woman hooting loudly before walking away and climbing onto one of the waiting buses. People are streaming in and out of the building wheeling road-cases and carrying guitars, and Rayna looks so comfortable among the bustle, so at home, that it cuts right through Teddy's chest. She belongs this way, he knows that, he just tries like all hell to pretend otherwise. It's harder to deny the truth when he's staring right at it, though.
It's harder to deny a lot of things.
Rayna starts to make her way towards the gates; the crowd clamours towards her, deafening in their jubilence. They hold out notebooks and ticket stubs and thrust pens towards her, wedge cameras up against the gate to snap pictures, and she happily obliges them all of it. Teddy keeps his head down; she's at the other side of the melee, far enough from him that he's still comfortably hidden, but his nerves flare all the same. Some of them shout Deacon's name too and Rayna beckons him over, encouraging him. Deacon, conversely, is definitely uncomfortable with the attention, but Rayna beams at him and Teddy witnesses something he has never seen for himself between them: they lock eyes for a few seconds too long, and when they break contact, he steps right up beside her, all reluctance vanished. It's as though they have an entire conversation without saying a single word, and Claybourne is visibly altered by it. Teddy can't help it, he stares at them with abandon.
Rayna chatters and thanks and gives pretty little exclamations at photos they hold up to her, self-deprecating and charming, and Teddy's heart sinks further. He's seen her do this before, but there is something different about her and he would be a fool - even more of one: his current activity very much deems him already a fool - to tell himself it's anything other than what is perfectly plain. She is different because he is beside her. She sparkles with happiness, with a surety that Teddy is only now realising has been missing, or maybe he's never known it to be there at all.
Some prick asks them for a photograph together, and they do this cute little shall we? face at each other, laughing with a hint of nervousness, like they're sixteen and the slow song has come on at the end of the school dance. They move in closer and their faces touch; her smile is soft, quiet, no trace of the real-but-practised beam she's given every other camera-wielding fan. The moment seems to last an age: they stand there frozen in time as they wait for the click of the lens, and Teddy wills the girl with the cheap disposable to get the hell on with it. The wind picks up all of a sudden and Deacon appears to involuntarily put his hand on Rayna's lower back as she shivers, using the side of his body to shield her from the brunt of the breeze. It's respectful, no imaginary boundary overstepped, but it's intimate somehow and too familiar; her body responds to his unconsciously and she leans into him gratefully and Teddy can't take another second. He spins on his heel as Angela and Squatty lose their fucking minds and angles quickly through the crowd, emerging onto the street and scanning the road for a getaway cab.
There isn't one and he takes off blindly in a random direction, regretting his stupid decision to ever come here and spy on her. He can't even be angry with her, he can't confront her and accuse her of things she's done wrong, how could she, how dare she - she hasn't done anything wrong.
Teddy is a pragmatic man, he deals with problems that are in front of him and tries to be fair and kind. He isn't good at reading between lines, or picking up on things unspoken. And yet he can tell, or he thinks he can, that she isn't sleeping with him. There is an unmistakable tension between them that smoulders, intense as could be, but it feels unresolved, a tiptoe, and Teddy takes deep, reassuring breaths as he holds out his arm to flag down a cab he spots like a mirage in the desert, telling himself that if he watched her for longer he'd see her restraint, her assertion of the line she's had to draw between herself and Deacon.
He jumps in and heads back to the hotel. In the time it takes to get there, ambling through the traffic that winds along streets heavy with colourful nightlife, he talks himself out of hiding in his room with the curtains closed for the rest of the night, for the second time since arriving in the city. His job here is only half complete, after all.
He pays and stands for a moment on the sidewalk. Rayna in front of fans is one thing; Rayna off duty, thinking no eyes are on her, is another. He crosses the street at a pause in traffic and slips into her hotel lobby.
Her crew are is starting to arrive back, laughter loud and chatter jovial. There's a small coffee station with a newspaper stand and Teddy picks one up, shaking out the pages and pretending to read. His scalp is itching with the captive heat rising from his head into his cap and he tugs it down a little further over his face, ducking under it as much as he can. He probably stands out like a sore thumb, sunglasses on at night, inside, but they're affording him the freedom to watch people as they scatter in through the revolving doors and he can't risk taking them off. Better that people throw him a passing glance and think him a poser than see him and recognise him as Rayna Jaymes' husband.
No one does glance at him, though - they're all too busy heading for the bar at the far end of the building. A bus drops a group back from the arena before long and they start to file through in their droves, that distinct look of musician about them all: crew in Rayna Jaymes t-shirts with her tour dates on the back of them, backing singers still in their figure-hugging black dresses, roadies and band members. Bucky walks in. He's talking on the phone, frowning about something, that busy air he always seem to have about him - Rayna sure works the guy hard.
The appearance of Bucky must mean she's not far behind, and Teddy feels his stomach knot. He's seen every other person he can identify - the only one who hasn't turned up yet, besides Rayna, is Deacon. So she's probably with him. What the hell are they doing that's taking so long? His confidence that she isn't sleeping with him starts to wane, and before he can pull it back on track it falls completely off its perch and he's certain, absolutely certain, that they're the last to arrive because Deacon has lifted up that pointless strip of a skirt and is screwing her up against a wall behind that damn arena. Or in an empty dressing room. Hell, in the back of a car on the way over here.
Graphic images run through his mind and he tries to push them away, to find his rationality somewhere amidst his panic, and right as he's losing the fight, she appears. She glides into the marble lobby, battered Converse where her heels had been, her stage outfit otherwise still on and visible beneath an open jacket she hadn't been wearing before. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders, her walk easy and relaxed, and Teddy lets out a breath. She's flanked by a couple of band members he'd forgotten about - no Deacon.
He immediately feels like an asshole. He won't doubt her anymore, he tells himself, he won't lay awake at night while she murmurs in her sleep, listening intently to catch her saying Deacon's name, which she's only ever done once, that he's caught. He needs to get over it, he needs to move on and forward and forget all about it. Rayna married him, after all, she's his wife.
And then she stops, looking around in confusion as though she's forgotten something. The frosted glass doors spin one more time in a human roulette and they spit out the last person Teddy wants to see. Deacon grins at Rayna as she spots him and he jogs the handful of paces to catch up to her.
'Were you doin' some sightseein' out there?' she teases, her Southern drawl playfully pronounced. She doesn't sound like that when she talks to Teddy.
'Left my guitar on the bus,' Deacon tells her, dipping his head and hitching the thing up further on his back. 'I ain't gonna be much good to you without this, huh?'
Rayna laughs melodically - how Teddy loves that laugh - and shakes her head. Her long, rusty red curls ripple in response and Teddy catches the look on Deacon's face. He's gazing at her. Right here in the respectable marble-floored lobby of a five-star hotel where porters are wearing dickie bows, for God's sake. The audacity of it.
'What am I gonna do with you?' she asks. It sounds suggestive to Teddy's ears, though logically he knows it isn't - she wouldn't be so crass as to flirt with a man who isn't her husband in such a public place. He can't even trust his own ears now.
They start walking again; Teddy lifts his paper higher, but he does not take his eyes from them for one single second. He hardly dares blink.
'So are we gonna go sink a couple sodas?' Deacon asks. One of their bandmates claps him on the shoulder and the other, walking just in front of him and Rayna, turns his head to them.
'You're gonna grace us with your presence tonight Deac?'
Deacon nods, laughing good-naturedly and rumbling a response, but they're getting further away and Teddy doesn't quite catch it. So he doesn't go to all of their aftershow parties. Well that's something. Teddy supposes it's so that he can cut himself off from the temptation to drink, and it gives him a smug satisfaction - small mercies. Evidently though, booze isn't the biggest temptation in this picture. He tries not to wonder if Rayna goes to all of the aftershow parties.
They disappear through some double-doors and Teddy realises his hands are clenched into fists, his decoy newspaper ripped at the edges. He folds it hastily and tucks it back into the stand and strides back out onto the street. He stands for a few minutes, hands jammed in his pockets, head tipped up at the sky, a city glow where there should be darkness. He's grateful for the cool of the night, the distracting honk of passing cars.
He sighs heavily. It's impossible to get into the bar where they all are, and he isn't intending to try. He knows most hotel bars usually lead to an outside area, a place for people to gather and smoke, and he's banking on being able to get to it from the street. He figures that will be the most telling place of all - if he sees her out there, chances are she'll be there without an entourage, seeking out peace and quiet after her show.
He looks around and spots a sign for the parking lot: Long stay, entrance on Adam Street. A painted arrow points to the right and Adam Street bends around the side the building; the fleet of tour buses are parked beyond a perfunctory barrier, and in a stroke of luck there is no attendant. Teddy steps over it and tries to look at casual as possible as he skirts the buses and heads towards a walled patio lined with trees. Bingo.
Wrought-iron tables and chairs are scattered across the flagstones and a few shorter walls divide the area into vaguely private sections. The only real light comes from the bar, tall glass doors allowing ambient dim bulbs to do a half-assed job of reaching the closest tables. It's the ideal place for a covert rendezvous, if that's your intention.
Teddy perches sideways on the wall furthest away. He can see anyone coming in and out of the doors but he's concealed in the convenient shade from the manicured trees that surround the patio. A handful of people mill about, smoking and talking about nothing that interests him. The tang of whiskey hangs in the air and Teddy wonders how in the hell Deacon finds the grit to resist. No wonder he skips some of these.
The doors are open slightly and noise and heat spill out; he strains his eyes, looking for her.
'You got a light?' a voice asks, and Teddy startles, dragging his eyes away from the bar and up to the bedraggled-looking man who's managed to sneak up on him. He admonishes himself - he must be more alert if he doesn't want to get caught, and he really really doesn't want to get caught.
'Er, no,' he says, his voice coming out a little too high. 'No,' he tries again, and throws in, untruthfully, 'I'm trying to quit.'
'Nah man,' the guy says, 'me too. I been tryin' to quit for a decade and a half.' He takes a few steps away and snags a lighter from someone else, a tall man just stubbing out a cigarette, who tells him to keep it and heads back inside.
Teddy curses under his breath and wonders if this part of his ridiculous plan is a step too close, if he's risking his cover being blown. She would be pissed as all hell at him if she found about any of this, and he's pretty much past the point of being able to pass it off as a surprise visit. No amount of jewellery would be able to explain lurking outside her hotel bar. Especially not in sweatpants.
Irritatingly, the guy comes back over to Teddy and sits down on the wall next to him as he sparks up. 'One of these days I gotta admit to myself that quittin' just ain't gonna happen. Gonna have to just embrace the addiction.' He takes a long drag and blows it out in utter satisfaction. 'Shit.'
Teddy doesn't say anything, just gives a nod in what he hopes is a comradery sort of way. He feels stupid in the sunglasses.
'So you must be new on this one, ain't seen you around before. Welcome to the mad house, friend.' He holds out a roughened hand. 'I'm Andy. Lighting.'
Teddy has no choice but to shake the man's hand. 'Daniel,' he says, cursing that his father's name is the first to spring to mind. 'Just ah… a roadie.'
He doesn't, if he's honest, know what a roadie does. Andy seems to buy this though and he blows a veil of smoke up into the air.
'Have you had a chance to chat to Rayna yet?' he asks. Teddy, in too deep now to turn back, says he hasn't. Andy nods slowly several times, staring straight ahead, as though Teddy has told him the answers to life and he's taking a moment to mull them over. 'She's quite a woman,' he says eventually. 'You should introduce yourself - she's always keen to get to know everyone on the tour. Don't matter you're a roadie or you own her label.'
Teddy realises the cigarette smells oddly familiar and he has a fleeting memory of an aunt on his mother's side, overweight and mean as a snake, smoked Marlboro Lights all her life. He tries not to gag. 'Have you been, ah, touring with her for long?'
'Sure have. Been around the block a time or two with Miss Rayna Jaymes.'
It's Mrs, now, Teddy wants to say, though he'd been unable to get her to change her name when they'd gotten married so technically she isn't Mrs anything. 'Lucky you,' he says. 'Must've had some good times?'
'Oh, you bet. Hard work, but always a damn good time. I'm glad as hell she's back out on the road, that's for sure. Feels like all's right with the world again.' He coughs; it sounds like a marble is rattling against his ribcage and Teddy frowns a little in alarm. 'I know she's got herself a family these days and all but she ain't never gonna be happy unless she's playin' music.'
'You don't think having a family is enough for her?' His voice takes on an edge and he quickly tries to curb it, with only partial success. 'You don't think that makes her happy?'
'Don't get me wrong now, that girl loves those babies. She loves 'em like crazy. I seen how much she misses 'em, we're three weeks into this tour and she's findin' it hard, for sure.'
It makes Teddy feel marginally better to hear, but still. She misses her girls - no mention of him.
'Is… is her husband on the tour with her?'
'Her husband? Nah, man. I don't know the guy but he's not the music type. Sounds like a decent sort, he's sure good to her, but if you ask me…' Andy trails off, shrugging with an annoyingly knowing look on his face.
I am asking you, Teddy thinks, but he merely tilts his head, his heart hammering sickeningly in his chest.
Andy stubs out his smoke. 'You ain't no undercover reporter or shit, are you?' he asks, but thankfully he merely glances at him, not bothering with scrutiny - because he's just joking, Teddy reassures himself. He shakes his head, trying to do his best I'm just a hardworkin' roadie, pal all the same. 'Well, if you ask me, and don't, 'cause I don't know shit, but he don't really know her, the husband, from what I hear round an' about. Like I say, I ain't never met the guy, I don't know a damn thing about him, but I do know Rayna.' He jabs a finger at no one in particular. 'And I know Deacon Claybourne.'
Teddy Conrad is a smart man. He knows when to ask questions, and generally speaking he knows when to shut up. He knows he should get up and bid Andy the lighting guy goodnight, head across the street without another word and haul his sorry ass straight to the bathroom so he can vomit in peace. He rubs his chin.
'So you were around back then,' he says instead of doing any such thing, 'during the Deacon years.'
Andy laughs before he speaks. It's the kind of laugh that tells a story: he was around, alright, and there was plenty to be around for. 'Yes sir. And I've lived to tell the tale.'
'What does that mean, exactly?'
Andy lifts an expensive hotel glass from where it's precariously balanced on the wall. 'Let's just say,' he mutters, tipping it in an imaginary toast, congratulating himself perhaps, 'we were all lucky to have made it through those years.' He flexes his eyebrows, no doubt at a carousel of memories. 'But you don't write the kinda songs they can pull out the bag if you don't know what it is to be on a rockin' boat. They knew how to fight, those two. But boy, did they know how to love.'
'Is that right?' Teddy says, too tight-lipped for it to be a question.
'Sure is. They loved a whole lot harder than they fought, and I swear sometimes they fought so hard not a damn one of of us dared get in the way.' The guy sounds almost wistful, and Teddy wants to smack him clean in the nose. 'Ain't never seen two people so in love in all my life. Never will again.'
'It didn't end well, though, obviously.'
Andy ignores his bitter tone, apparently not finished re-living the Rayna and Deacon glory days. 'Couldn't keep their hands off each other, either. Can't tell you how many times they been caught in compromisin' situations.' He chuckles. 'Not like they even needed to be touchin' to make you feel like you were witnessin' real intimacy, though. Could be a room full of people and you'd think it was just them in it, way they looked at each other.' He knocks back a swig of thick, sludgy whiskey and delivers the lowest blow yet. 'They still do.'
Teddy doesn't know what to say, and he thinks he might have lost the ability to speak anyway. He mutely wonders whether it's too late to reach for the cigarette pack that's poking out of Andy's shirt pocket. Better yet, if he can rip the glass out of his hands and burn the shit out of his throat until it matches the way his chest feels.
Andy sighs and shrugs. 'I know she's happy an' all now, the husband, the babies, the nice home,' he says, and it's just insult to injury at this point, 'but I'll tell you this - she won't never be over Deac. That love is down in the history books for a reason - only comes along once in a lifetime, that soulmate thing, and only if you're very fuckin' lucky.'
And with that he swirls the ice cubes around in his glass, drains it and gets up, giving Teddy a salute, casual as hell as though he hasn't just ripped his heart out. 'Nice chattin' with you, man. Gotta go finish drinkin' this bar dry - I'll see ya around. You ever need anythin', you know where to find me.'
He leaves Teddy sitting on the cold, uncomfortable stone wall in a city he doesn't live in, on a night he's supposed to be home in the bed he shares with a wife who still loves another man.
He stays there for a long time, unaware he's twirling the gold band on his left ring finger around and around. It should be a promise, a reassurance - it should comfort him. It doesn't. He's wrong, it's in the past, he tells himself, too fervently. The words turn into a chant in his head - if he repeats them enough times maybe he'll believe them.
He's about to get up and leave, having heard more than enough, when her voice floats through the muffled din from the bar. Rayna. That throaty, silken tone she has. Teddy looks up - she's walking out through the open door. He panics.
At bullet speed he scrambles off the wall and there's no time to think of something less clumsy to do - he dives over it and ducks behind the nearest tree. There will be time later to berate himself for it, to balk at the desperation that has fuelled this whole sorry venture.
Rayna comes to a few feet away, enough not to see him, and he hopes she doesn't feel his eyes on her. She isn't alone. Of course she isn't - by this point he doesn't even expect anything else. It's just the two of them, Rayna in a different, off-duty outfit - when did she change? - a glass in her hand, Deacon beside her, nothing in his. They sit on a couple of chairs that are without a table, not quite facing the direction Teddy is hiding in, much to his relief, until he sees them tilt the chairs slightly towards each other.
'What a night,' Rayna says, leaning back and sighing happily into the sky. Deacon's eyes stay on her.
'Sure was,' he agrees. 'This tour is goin' so well.'
'Yeah. I was nervous as hell about that, you know. I wasn't sure if people would even want me to come back after bein' away so long.'
The diffused light illuminates them and Teddy can just make out the smile on Deacon's face. 'Of course they were gonna want you back.' He relaxes in his chair too, mirroring her unconsciously. 'They'll always want you back.'
'I don't know, Deacon, people are forgotten about in much less time.'
'There's no forgettin' you, Ray. Trust me.'
Bastard.
She nudges him with her shoulder. Teddy balls his hands into fists by his sides. He doesn't know which part pisses him off more - the obvious double meaning or the name. He's heard Deacon call her that before: Ray. He tried it himself one time, early on in their relationship, and it unsettled her to say the least. He's never used it again, and she hasn't ever told him it's a Deacon thing - and exclusively a Deacon thing - but she doesn't need to. It sounds so intimate when he says it in the almost-empty hotel courtyard that Teddy feels like an intruder.
And for all intents and purposes, he is, right now at least.
'The band are soundin' great,' Rayna says, 'you're doin' such a good job with them. I wasn't sure about a couple of 'em before we got you back in charge, but you've whipped everythin' into shape.' She laughs, a low, sultry rumble. 'As always.'
Not fucking quite always. Teddy wants to stand up and yell, like an objection at a wedding, that maybe she shouldn't forget the several stints in rehab or all the times he didn't turn up for her shows. He wants to remind her about the middle of the night knocks on her door when the stench of booze would reach her before she'd even opened it, the fights, the searing disappointments. She's never talked to Teddy - or anyone, as far as he knows - about the detail of it all, but she doesn't need to - those are lines he does know how to read between. They're lines he's stood on himself, his father spilling shots of shitty whiskey all over them; the name and details may differ but an alcoholic is an alcoholic.
'Thank you,' Deacon replies quietly. 'That means a lot. A hell of a lot. I didn't know if you'd ever be able to trust me to lead your band again.'
Rayna smiles. 'There was a time I couldn't, obviously. A lot's happened since then.'
'Yeah. A lot.'
The guy sounds sadder than hell. Should have got your shit together before you lost her, Teddy thinks scathingly. They fall silent for a couple of minutes; it's companionable rather than awkward.
And then she reaches out and touches his arm. Deacon turns his face to her, and Teddy can make out the yearning written all over it. He's pretty sure it could be seen from space. She gives his forearm a sort of squeeze, lingering there - comforting, maybe, but it's more than that.
'Do you ever think about how it used to be?' he asks. Rayna pulls her hand back.
'All the time.' She dips her head. 'All the time.'
'Are you happy, Ray? With the way things are now, your life?'
Teddy holds his breath until he starts to see stars. He watches how still she gets, wishing he could better see the expression on her face and not wanting to see it at all.
'It's a different life to the one I thought I'd be living,' she says after a pause, and he can hear that she's choosing her words carefully. For Deacon's benefit or her own, he doesn't know. 'There's a lot of it I'm happy with.'
Deacon nods a few times, digesting the ambiguity of her answer.
'Are you?' she asks. 'Happy?'
Deacon Claybourne is nothing if not brazen. He gives a humourless laugh. 'I ain't never gonna be happy without you, Rayna.'
To her credit, Rayna looks away.
'But am I happier than I was a few years ago? Yeah. Absolutely.'
She's pleased; her hand hovers towards him again but she thinks better of it. 'I'm really proud of you, Deacon. You've come such a long way and I know what it took, I know what it still takes. Those years were nothin' short of hell.'
Deacon lifts a foot and props it over his knee. 'You ever wonder what Vince would say if he were here? What he'd make of us, of everythin' that's happened?'
'Oh I can think of a million things Vince would say, and I wouldn't be able to repeat a single one.' They laugh, softly, sadly. 'I think…' She lifts her feet up onto the chair and rests her head on her knees, her face turned towards him. 'I think he'd tell us he was finally startin' to recognise us again.'
Teddy's calves ache. A small animal is crunching around nearby and he's never needed a mini-bar more. He has no idea who Vince is, or what appears to have happened to him, but the glimpse into just how vast Rayna's history with Deacon is and how little Teddy knows about it is unsettling at best. He wills them to be done talking, for someone to come outside and interrupt them - anything so that he doesn't have to hear more.
'And you know what, I think I am too,' Rayna continues. 'This tour, you bein' back - properly back - it feels like home. But we couldn't have done this a few years ago - we couldn't have done this a few months ago, even.' She sets her drink down and looks at him intently, fired up by whatever realisation she's had. Teddy half expects her to declare that she's ditching her marriage and wants to shack up on a sweaty tour bus with Deacon for the rest of her life.
'Why is that we can do it now?' Deacon asks. Good fucking question.
'Because our whole lives together, you and me, it's been all or nothin'. We've never been able to do anythin' halfway, we've been both feet in or runnin' like hell on 'em as far away as we can. But now… we have to do this halfway, we don't have a choice now. And somehow it's actually workin'. I got a family at home, I got people who depend on me, and you got your programme you're workin' every day - neither one of us can risk throwin' everythin' in. We've been forced to do halfway and it turns out, the last thing we'd ever thought would be possible is the only thing that is.'
Deacon's nod is slow; he chews the inside of his cheek as he thinks this over. 'Sorta like, this balance is what lets us be in each other's lives.'
'Exactly. I can be out on the road with you because I have that stability, and that grounding, back home, but I can only handle the responsibility of that because I have you, and music, out here, remindin' me who I am in this way too. I think I realise it now… maybe neither life works without the other.'
Teddy half-registers Deacon murmuring an understanding, but he's heard enough. He scans the trees and sees an opening to an alleyway that leads away from the hotel; he gets up, slowly and as quietly as he can, and heads for it. When he turns back to give them one last look, they're still talking, no disturbance noted. He keeps walking until he reaches a road, and loops back on it to get to his own hotel.
His room is cold. He'd forgotten to turn the AC off when he'd left earlier and it's filled the place with chilly air. He's glad; it soothes him.
He flops down onto the bed and takes off his decoy clothes, sitting for a minute in the reindeer boxers Rayna had gotten him as a joke one Christmas. He picks up the handset beside his bed and dials his work mailbox, checking for messages: one from Jenny telling him the girls want to say goodnight. Their sweet voices fill the line and Teddy's throat closes up. He's sad he wasn't there to answer.
The beer in the mini-bar is cold and refreshing as it slides down his throat; three swift glugs to take the edge off his thirst and he sets the bottle down on the nightstand, leaning back on too-plump pillows and staring up at the ceiling.
He gets it now. She doesn't work without either of them. Deacon is one part of her world and Teddy is another, and as much as he hates the thought of it, it makes sense. He doesn't have a decade and a half long history with her, he doesn't get the music stuff, but he does have two children and a home and a life that they share. She gave her heart to Deacon Claybourne a long time ago and maybe it will always be his, maybe Andy the lighting guy is right, that kind of love only comes along once in a lifetime, but she didn't marry Deacon. She married Teddy. She chooses to come home to him at night, her child calls Teddy, not Deacon, Daddy. Sometimes it isn't about feelings, not even deep, fabled ones - it's about what's best. And what's best for Rayna is Teddy, the steady life he provides for her and their family.
She isn't cheating on him, there is no illicit affair going on in backstage corridors, but what he knows now is almost worse. There is a certainty in his bones that wasn't there before, one that tells him that he will, one day, whenever that day may be, lose her to Deacon. It hurts: his stomach twists, his heart heavy with a weight he knows won't ease now.
And yet. She needs them both. Deacon's presence and his too. If Teddy can accept Deacon being in her life, then she'll stay in his own.
He gets up and walks to the window, pulling back a corner of the opaque privacy curtain. The Lincoln Grand is red brick opulence, cornices adorning the windows peppered across its front. Lights are on in several and he leans his elbows on the sill, resting his forehead against the glass. His mind wanders: her laugh, that smile. The warmth she has for everyone she talks to, strangers and colleagues and ex-lovers alike. The girl with the disposable camera that holds the image of her and Deacon, a random moment now captured forever.
The uppermost windows are longer, stretching the width of two below. The penthouse. A lamp is on somewhere in the suite, not close enough to the window to do much more than backlight it, but he can see a figure moving around and he knows without question that it's her. Teddy quickly flicks off the light in his own room, plunging it into darkness. Rayna's outline comes close to one of the windows and starts to pull the curtains closed, but lingers there for a few seconds, seeming to look down onto the street.
Teddy waits, watching. His fretful brain tells him to brace: Deacon is going to appear behind her, slip his arms around her, they'll embrace, he'll kiss her. He'll pick her up, carry her to a big bed out of sight.
But Deacon doesn't appear behind her. No one does. Rayna is alone, and Teddy can just make out that she's in an old t-shirt. She steps back and tugs on the curtains and they whoosh across the window: she's gone.
It's then that the phone in his room rings. He jumps out of his skin and stares at it, not daring to answer. When it rings again a couple of minutes later he remembers: the phone in his study at home, the separate line that Rayna calls him on when it's late so as not to wake the girls, he'd put it on redirect before leaving town, and he'd asked front desk to put any calls through to his room. He checks the clock on the wall: it's gone midnight.
He picks up this time. It's his answerphone calling. Hey Teddy, her voice says. She sounds tired, pensive. Just wanted to call and say goodnight.
He listens as she apologises for the late hour, she knows he's had a long one at work, that he's probably fast asleep by now and she hopes so, he needs his rest for all the pancake demands in the morning. She tells him she misses the girls, that the show went well tonight. That she wishes they could all be with her.
It's the I miss you that kills him, that pulls at his heart and threatens to tear it apart. I love you, Teddy. I don't know where I'd be without you.
She'd hung up at that, but he doesn't; he grips the handset close to his ear and lets the monotone hum ring out on the line until it stops, clicks three times and goes dead.
I don't know where I'd be without you.
He looks towards the still-open curtains, out towards her room. The penthouse is dark now, impenetrable. The AC has cooled the ring on his finger and its place feels restored, solid. If Teddy has to find a way to accept Deacon being in Rayna's life, that's what he'll do. He's the one she calls before she falls asleep, and right now, it's enough for him.
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