Thank you twenty million times to Shiny Jewel for the beta read! This has been on my mind for a while because personally, I don't feel like this particular story line is done. Call it a gut hunch. :) Enjoy!
"I know I screwed up, and I know you've been seeing Teddy Conrad, but I don't want you to anymore. I love you, Ray. I love you more than anything else in the whole world. Let's do this, baby. Please marry me."
He blinked hard, in part to adjust his aging eyes to the biting darkness on the road in front of him, but also to cast the memory aside.
He chuckled bitterly at the thought.
What memory?
He didn't remember the exact exchange or when it happened, but she had been so kind to share the dialogue with him on a couple of occasions through the years. Mostly when they were arguing over something stupid and it seemed out of place and inappropriate, but he always chalked that part up to pent up tension and unfinished business between the two of them. Sure, her spitting those words out at him and bringing it up when they were arguing over backstage catering sounded pretty ridiculous, but he often found himself clinging to it in a twisted way.
The day she stops being mad is the day she doesn't feel anything anymore.
He'd told himself that every day for nearly 14 years, it never once occurring to him that every time she threw that story in his face like a glass of ice cold strawberry lemonade on a summer lake shore, that she was also leaving out one minor detail—she'd wound up pregnant that night.
Christ.
He focused on his dim headlights barely illuminating the double yellow lines and shook his head. He wasn't angry anymore. He couldn't be—he had his daughter now and that's what mattered. He needed to think about her music, her school work, what to get her for her birthdays, holidays with her, her prom, her graduation, what she'd study in college (if she event went when he could get her a gig at the Blue Bird or Tootsies at any given moment), her engagement party, her wedding, her babies and holy shit.
His thoughts were getting far away from him; most certainly they weren't obeying the posted 30 MPH sign he passed a few feet back. They were going closer to 100 MPH and shutting down the point he was trying to make to himself—that he couldn't hold any more ire for the situation because the present and future needed all of his energy.
He turned on his blinker and made the left hand turn, unsurprised that his was the only vehicle on the road. It was 4 AM, after all. Well past the time for anyone to be heading home from bars, but far too early for most to be going to work.
A light sprinkle began to fall on his windshield as he switched on the wipers.
"Were you drunk last night when you asked me?"
"When I asked you what?"
He winced at the vague recollection of her throwing the small diamond band back at him. At best, his memory was clouded by a fog the likes of which London had never seen but he still remembered how shaky his hands were when he fumbled to pick the ring up from the floor.
He'd been losing her piece by piece for a while, but he couldn't help but feel like he was finally losing the whole of her in that moment, and he'd been right.
She'd left him as alone, perhaps more so, in that moment than he was currently on the deserted road.
He sighed, slowly approaching his destination. He was glad, as it seemed he was finally becoming too consumed with everything to effectively operate a motor vehicle.
He could see her hastily throwing the plaid robe to the side as she angrily tried to slam the door in his face to keep him from her naked body.
He could hear her screaming that she was done—DONE—with him and his sickness and everything they had done to her.
He could feel her falling to the floor on the other side in a heap of sobs, asking "Why?" over and over and over.
He threw the truck into park and put his hands to his face.
He didn't say anything when she collapsed to the floor, sure that trying to reason with her would just result in even more anguish and bitter words and things neither of them meant to say or even feel, so he'd quietly slipped the ring under the crack in the door and walked away and let her go on her way in peace.
She'd pick it up, dust it off, and in a day or two she'd call him and they'd meet and everything would be as perfect as it was supposed to be.
Except in just six short hours, he'd be at the bar down the way. She'd never call. He'd learn from his sponsor that she was getting married, he'd hear on the radio that she was pregnant, and he would learn just two short weeks after that newsflash that she'd given birth to a healthy 6 lb., 4 oz. baby girl named Madeline Jade.
He felt hot tears spring to his eyes as he noted that the day or two later it was supposed to take for him to see that ring again turned into 14 years and when he did finally see it again, she was handing it back to him and cutting him loose. Again. She told him that they needed to save their selves.
Bullshit.
He was broken when he tossed it into the pile of well-wishing tributes; absolutely fucking broken. He saw absolutely no end to their torture. He never saw himself in her life again, much less in the life of his child. He never saw that he could be worthy of music again. He never saw any of it because he was too busy being consumed by his own debilitating darkness.
He wiped a stray tear before opening the door, slowly stepping onto the dirt of that unfortunately familiar intersection.
The darkness was gone now and finally he saw light.
He was going to do what she said and save himself.
He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight, walking with an Olympian's determination to the place where that heart wrenching display once stood.
He didn't care if it was 4 AM; he wasn't eating, sleeping, or living until he was in her house placing that ring on her finger once and for all—placing it where it belonged all along.