I feel like all I've done is write sad stories about Rayna and Deacon, so decided to change it up a little bit. This looks ahead at what it might be like on "Nashville" fifteen months after the accident. What if something happens that brings them together again and makes them face all those old feelings?

"Sweetheart? Rayna?" Tandy reached for her sister's hand. Rayna jumped as though she'd been startled and turned back to look at Tandy. "Where were you?" Tandy asked.

Rayna gave her a ghost of a smile. Her eyes looked slightly unfocused, as though she'd been daydreaming. She shrugged. "Just thinking."

"What about?"

Rayna shrugged again and then smiled more broadly. "I was thinking about getting one of those frou frou drinks with the umbrella."

Tandy laughed. They were sitting by the pool at the Viceroy Resort in Anguilla. She had suggested a girls' weekend and was a little surprised Rayna had agreed. The past 15 months since the accident had been tough and had resulted in many major life-changing events for Rayna. Tandy had thought a getaway might do her some good. "I think we should both have one of those," she responded.

Rayna sat up on the lounge chair. "Why don't you order them? I left my book in the room."

"Ok." Tandy watched her sister get up and walk towards the hotel. Then she waved a server over and placed their order. She thought Rayna still seemed a little distracted and at loose ends. But nearly dying might cause that reaction. A lot of other things had happened in the aftermath. There was the divorce from Teddy and then his engagement and break up with Peggy Kenter. Rayna had left Edgehill Republic, along with Juliette Barnes, and they had joined an upstart label, along with Rayna's Highway 65 venture. Her relationship with Maddie was better, finally, but they still were going through fits and starts. And Maddie's reaction to Teddy's situation with Peggy had exacerbated her normal teenage craziness. Rayna had had several relationships, very uncharacteristically, and had been disappointed on that front. But the biggest change was that she had broken up with Deacon right after she'd gotten out of the hospital. And had had very little contact with him since. Tandy thought that was what had changed her sister the most. She had hoped this trip would be a way to break through with Rayna, but she had steadfastly refused to talk about Deacon anymore.

When Rayna came back and sat down, Tandy handed her a drink. Rayna smiled and took a sip. "Mmm, that's perfect!" she said. She looked over at her sister. "Thanks for making me come on this trip, babe. This is great. I really needed this."

Tandy smiled back. "I'm so glad you came. I was afraid you'd think you couldn't get away." She took a sip of her drink. "How's work going, by the way?"

Rayna nodded, smiling. "Good, actually. I was afraid it would feel odd being with a new label after all those years with Edgehill, but it's been really good. Scarlett's first album drops next week and we're working on some things for Gunnar."

"What about you?"

Rayna shrugged. "You know, I really thought I'd miss the touring and the recording all the time, but it's actually been nice to take a little step back and work with some new talent." She laughed and winked at her sister. "I'm actually going to do a little benefit show with Juliette, if you can believe that."

Tandy looked surprised. "That, well, that really surprises me. I mean, it was kind of surprising that she left Edgehill with you, but I never thought you'd want to be on a stage with her again."

"Well, she's grown up a teeny tiny bit." Rayna scrunched her face up, then looked serious. "She's been a friend to Maddie and I have to admit that I appreciate it. I thought she might try to take advantage of the situation, but she's actually helped it a little, I think."

Tandy raised her eyebrows. "Really. That is surprising. She doesn't really strike me as that good of a role model."

"Well, I don't want Maddie to be Juliette, but if Juliette can help her work through some of her anger, then maybe it's not so bad."

Tandy reached for Rayna's hand and squeezed it. "She seems like she's coming around a little."

Tears pricked Rayna's eyes. "A little. I'm wondering if we'll ever get back to how things were. I miss my relationship with her."

"Is she talking to Deacon, do you know? Spending any time with him?"

Rayna picked up the sunscreen and squeezed some into her hand. She started rubbing it on her arms. "Some. But she won't talk to me about it. Just like she won't talk to me about anything important anymore. I don't know what to do, Tandy."

Tandy hurt for her sister. Maddie's emotions had been all over the map after she found out about Deacon being her biological father. She had struggled tremendously with the fact that Rayna had hid that from her for her whole life. The circumstances of the accident had made things exponentially worse. Maddie had talked to her some in the beginning, but she had been more circumspect over the last year. Apparently Juliette Barnes was filling the void. "Is she still not seeing Teddy?"

Rayna shook her head. "That whole business with Peggy really threw her for a loop. I hate it though. He really wants to mend fences with her. He could probably force the issue, but he's trying to respect her feelings, I think. And it makes things stressful for Daphne to have her sister and her father at odds with each other. She feels like she's in the middle."

"Well, it's hard when your parents start dating other people. You know she was not happy about that even before the divorce."

Rayna nodded. "That is true."

"Speaking of dating, are you seeing anyone now? Thinking about it?" She winked at her sister.

Rayna rolled her eyes and shook her head. "God, no. Tandy, I really hate dating, I have to tell you. Or maybe it's just that my judgment about men is messed up." She laughed. "That's probably it. My radar for good men is permanently broken." She patted Tandy's hand. "I think you got the last good one."

Tandy smiled broadly. "Yeah, Bucky is a gem. We need to find you a Bucky."

Rayna laughed and looked fondly at her sister. Tandy and Bucky were so different and yet so much the same. She was happy that they had found each other. "Just no bedtime stories, please," she said.

Tandy laughed. "No promises. So, should I be on the lookout for a new man for you?"

Rayna shook her head, but was still smiling. "No, I think I need to be on my own for a bit. I mean, I went from Deacon to Teddy back to Deacon and then Liam and Luke and Jeff. I just don't think I make very good choices. I've got to reassess."

"I will say that I was surprised that you dated Jeff, after the way he behaved when you were still at Edgehill."

Rayna looked knowingly at Tandy. "I know. But he was so apologetic after it all happened and he seemed very charming. What can I say? I'm not very good at picking men."

"Oh, sweetheart, I don't think you can make that kind of blanket statement. You went through a lot after the accident and you were trying to reinvent yourself. Trying out different men is just part of that."

Rayna threw her head back and laughed. "You make it sound like I was squeezing cantaloupe at the Kroger." She looked at her sister and smiled a little sadly. "It's just hard, you know? I didn't think it would be this hard."

Tandy looked off towards the beach. She was pretty sure Rayna was talking about Deacon, even if she didn't want to talk about it. When Rayna had told Deacon they were through, Tandy thought it was the right thing to do. At least for a while. She knew Rayna needed some time to work through all the issues that the accident had raised and she needed to deal with Deacon's fall from sobriety. She wasn't at all sure she knew where Rayna's head was at with respect to Deacon these days. She wasn't sure she wanted her sister to be with Deacon, but she knew it wasn't up to her. "Have you talked to Deacon?"

Rayna shook her head. "Not about anything other than Maddie. And not face to face. It all still feels awkward."

"Give it time. It'll get more natural."

Rayna turned and gave Tandy a knowing smile. "And that's all we're going to say about that, ok?"

Tandy shrugged. "Sure." She didn't really care if they talked about Deacon or not, but she really did think that Rayna needed to resolve whatever her feelings were. She and Bucky had talked about the fact that she was really shut down about that subject. Bucky told her that people walked on eggshells around her when it came to any news about Deacon. It was as though he didn't exist. Tandy had no idea what the future held for them, but she did think they needed to figure out how to coexist for Maddie's sake. She sat back on her lounge chair as Rayna picked up her book and thought about how she could get Rayna to open up.

Rayna put on her sunglasses and opened her book, but she wasn't looking at the words. Now that so much time had passed since the accident, things looked different than they had in the immediate aftermath. She knew that she had jumped in bed, figuratively and literally, with Liam, Luke and Jeff to try to erase Deacon from her life. She had really thought cutting him out was the right thing to do. She had felt so self-righteous in her anger towards him and her hurt and her blame. He was the one that was drunk, he was the one who was unable to deal with tough situations, he was the one who had caused her to nearly die. What had she told him? That the fact that they hadn't died meant that they needed to move forward separately? Was that really what it meant? She knew she had meant it then, but more recently she had started to feel unsettled. And one day, when she was sitting at the cemetery in front of her mom's grave, something she was doing more often since the accident, she had had a moment of clarity so huge that it had taken her breath away.

In all those months, she had never once thought about what had brought them to that place. To that confrontation in the dressing room at the CMA's. To the corner of Granny White Pike and Battlefield Dr. To the point at which they had no contact at all except for stilted conversations about Maddie. It had started, now more than fifteen years ago, with an agreement to cover up a truth. An agreement to pretend that Teddy Conrad was her daughter's father, an agreement to deny Maddie's real father. Regardless of whether the heart was in the right place all those years ago, there was a conscious decision to lie and to enlist others to help protect that lie. And then she had kept that truth hidden, continued to lie every single day. Every single moment. For thirteen years.

What had she really thought would happen that night she showed up on Deacon's porch? That they could have a relationship and she still could cover up the truth? She had realized early on that she couldn't do both and she had tried pulling back, but the pull towards him was too strong. He was so much a part of her fabric that she couldn't deny him. And so she had set them on the path to where they ended up at that intersection that night.

How foolish had she been, how foolish had they all been, to think that they could hide their secret forever? Because that was the reality. They really had, somehow, thought they could keep this from Deacon and Maddie forever. The longer it had gone on, the worse the potential fallout from the truth coming out, and that was what had played out that dark night.

It had hit Rayna like a freight train that day in the cemetery and she couldn't get it out of her head. She had tried to bury it for a year but when she had finally gotten past the flurry of activity she'd used to try to eradicate Deacon from her life, there it was. It was my fault. It all started with me. And now that the genie was out of the bottle, she couldn't put it back in. And she wasn't sure where to go with it or how to make amends. It had been so long now. She couldn't be sure that she hadn't gotten to the point of no return.