Thirteen years is a long time for two people who are each other's soul mates to be apart. This is a little different, somewhat AU, take on Deacon and Rayna's relationship during those thirteen years that Rayna was married to Teddy. We don't have a lot to go on, history-wise, during those years, so I'm reimagining that whole relationship a bit. My plan is to write each chapter from both POV's.
This is kind of a story, and yet not necessarily, but sort of a series of moments that defined that relationship and carry us from what I would have imagined to be initially awkward to the place where they really began to acknowledge the depth of their relationship and the inevitability of it. I'm imagining a lot of defining moments along the way that move them closer and closer together again. Hope you enjoy.
Back To Me Without You
Rayna set the bottle down and then lifted Maddie to her shoulder, rubbing her back gently. After a few minutes, Maddie burped, and Rayna moved her back to the crook of her arm so she could cuddle her. The baby's eyes were slowly closing and Rayna just held her that way until she was fast asleep. She smiled down at her daughter and then, steadying herself with her hand on the arm of the couch, pushed herself up slowly. Maddie screwed up her face a little, but then it smoothed out and, after she smacked her tiny lips a couple times, she settled down.
Rayna walked back to the nursery and carefully laid Maddie down in her crib, covering her with a light blanket. She rested her hands on the side of the crib and looked down at her daughter. She breathed in deeply. When Maddie's eyes were open, they were a beautiful crystal blue, a perfect match to her light covering of dark brown hair. When she smiled or laughed, she had tiny dimples in her cheeks, and when she was unhappy, she had a tiny little crease between her eyebrows. Just like her father.
From the day Madeline Virginia Conrad was born, Rayna had felt this overwhelming need to keep her daughter safe. She knew that she and Teddy could provide a good life for their daughter, but her urge to protect Maddie weighed heavily on her. Maddie had turned six months old two weeks earlier. Rayna was getting ready to go back into rehearsals for a tour to support the album she'd released while she was pregnant. It had been amazing to be able to take the time with her new baby, getting to know her and getting comfortable with being a mama. It felt like she'd been born to do it.
She was afraid she'd disturb Maddie if she stayed too long, so she turned, after one last wistful look at the baby, and walked out of the nursery. She went into the kitchen and picked up the tea kettle from the stove. She filled it with water and then set it back on the burner, turning on the gas. While the water heated, she retrieved a mug from the cabinet and a tea bag, and then waited for the water to boil.
When she had fixed her tea, she took it out onto the courtyard patio of the house she shared with Teddy. She sat at the little table they'd bought right after they'd moved in. She set the baby monitor in the center so she could hear if Maddie woke up. It was a pleasant fall day, with just the hint of chill in the air. She took a sip of her tea. When she put the mug down, the sun seemed to dance off the diamond on her left ring finger.
She had told Teddy he didn't have to buy her an engagement ring. They really weren't going to do all the traditional engagement stuff, since she was already three months pregnant and they needed to just get married. She'd been surprised when he'd told her he wanted to marry her. She knew she'd broken his heart when she'd told him he probably wasn't her baby's father. She supposed, though, that he'd decided to hold on to hope for at least a little while since they waited to do a paternity test until after the baby was born. She had been grateful to him for offering to marry her. She'd been prepared to do it on her own, but she had also realized that had they not gotten married, it would have been obvious that Deacon was her baby's father. This way, Maddie had a father she could count on and she herself had the kind of stability she hadn't known since long before she'd left her father's house.
She sat back in her chair and wrapped her arms around her waist. Deacon had been sober now for a year. He'd come back to Nashville, after his six month program, just days after Maddie was born. He hadn't tried to see her and she had tried not to check up on him. It would be too hard, she knew. It was hard enough to look in her daughter's face and see him looking back at her. It hurt so much to hold their baby girl and know they couldn't raise her up together, the way they should have. She felt the tears, yet again, as they rolled down her cheeks. She'd cried every day for over a year for what could have been, what should have been. But now would never be. She was Teddy Conrad's wife and their daughter was Maddie Conrad, not Maddie Claybourne.
When the courier had delivered the envelope, Rayna had known what was inside. It was two weeks after Maddie had been born and Teddy had gone into the office for some meetings, so Rayna was alone when it came. She turned the envelope over in her hands, but finally had decided to wait until Teddy came home to open it. She knew in her heart what the results would be. She had known when she'd first looked at the positive pregnancy test. She had known without question the minute she'd laid eyes on her baby. She was sure that Teddy knew too, but he'd avoided the subject during her pregnancy.
In many ways, being pregnant had been the happiest time of her life. She had always wanted to be a mama and she couldn't wait for her baby to be born. They'd found out it was a girl and Rayna had been thrilled. She'd spent many hours putting together the nursery, buying the furniture, deciding on the wallpaper, buying tiny clothes and blankets and stuffed animals. She liked sitting in the nursery, in the rocking chair that Lamar had given her as a gift, thinking about how her life would change.
But it had also been the saddest time of her life and it was on those days, as she sat in the rocking chair and ran her hands over a children's book or held a velvety soft blanket in her lap, that she thought about Deacon. She would rest her hand on her belly, feeling their baby move inside her, and she would cry. Sometimes softly, but most times it was heart-rending sobs, her heart breaking over the fact that the family she'd always dreamed of having with him would never happen.
When Teddy had come home that day, they'd sat on the couch in the den and opened the envelope together. Teddy held the piece of paper tightly as Rayna leaned over to read it. 'The alleged father is excluded as the biological father of the child named above.' She'd had such conflicting emotions. Teddy didn't say a word, just laid the letter down on the coffee table, and had gone out on the patio. Rayna watched him for a moment, then looked back at the test results. She wasn't surprised by what they said, but she was surprised by how sad she felt for her husband.
Teddy had been quiet and distant for several weeks afterwards. He still doted on Maddie, cuddling her every chance he got. He wouldn't talk about the results and eventually Rayna stopped trying to get him to tell her how he felt. He would come to bed only after he thought she was asleep and then would lay rigidly on his side facing away from her.
One evening, when he came home from work, he walked into the nursery while she was feeding Maddie. He stood by the crib, not looking at her. "I will always be Maddie's father," he said, quietly. "I will love her and protect her and no one will ever know she is not my own." He turned and looked at her sternly. "No one," he said firmly.
She understood exactly what he meant.
So now she was moving on with her life. A life without Deacon in it. It was hard to think about, had been hard to think about this past year and a half. Deacon had been her family, the one person she could always count on in her life. He knew her better than anyone. He understood her, knew what she was thinking, could see through her like nobody else. She hadn't grown up on fairy tales and happy endings, but when she'd met Deacon Claybourne, she'd been swept away by emotions and feelings she'd never experienced before. He was supposed to be her happy ending. She'd thought that's what they had, even as things got tough.
But then things got painful. She had stayed long past when she should have left. But she hated to give up on him, probably wouldn't have given up completely had she not seen that pink plus sign on the home pregnancy test. She still felt an ache in her heart whenever she thought about Deacon, but these days, she thought more about that tiny baby in the other room. That fragile life who needed to be protected and nurtured and loved. And as much as she hated that Maddie wouldn't know the love of her true father, she would certainly be loved and cared for by parents who could give her what she needed.
She never thought she'd be doing this without Deacon, but she was. She wasn't sure how she was going to do any of this without him. But she breathed in deeply as she told herself, yet again, that this was the best thing for all of them.
~nashville~
Deacon sat on the couch with his guitar, absentmindedly picking out a melody. He hadn't done much songwriting since he'd been back from rehab. Not much inspired him anymore. Back in the days when he and Rayna were together, he'd been inspired every day. Everything they wrote, everything he wrote, was about them, about her. But she was someone else's wife now. A mama to another man's child. She'd really and truly moved on. He'd never thought that would really happen, mainly because it never had before. She would always be there, in the end, even when she told him she would not.
It had ended, once and for all, that day he'd shown up, seriously hungover, at rehearsal and she'd fired him, in front of everyone. And by the time he'd made it home, after drowning his sorrows at a neighborhood bar, everything she owned was gone. She'd sent him to rehab, but he hadn't lasted long. When he thought back to those days, it was painful. Details were foggy back then. He would wake up thinking she was still there and roll over to find her side of the bed empty, unslept in. He remembered a morning he'd woken up at the cabin and she was inexplicably there. Actually waking up was probably not completely accurate. He'd sort of come to and he'd had a wicked hangover, made worse by her anger at him. He didn't understand how or why she was even there. He'd show up at a rehearsal and she'd flee the stage in tears, leaving Bucky to tell him he didn't work there anymore. He'd been trying to stay sober after she had moved out, but he wasn't always successful. He went to meetings but more times than not something would trigger a bad memory and he'd wake up the next morning not sure where he'd been or how much he'd had to drink.
He hadn't seen Rayna again after that. At least he didn't remember seeing her again. His life had been a series of blackouts then, missing time and mixed up timelines. She'd moved everything she owned out of their house at some point and then his life just seemed to spiral out of control. Coleman had showed up at his front door one day and told him he had to go to rehab. Again. Rayna had just gotten married to Teddy Conrad. It had been all over the news. He couldn't seem to avoid hearing about it so he'd spent the time drinking himself nearly unconscious. No one was there anymore to make sure he was okay and there was more than one time when he'd wished he never woke up. Without Rayna, his life had no meaning. Drinking at least made it not hurt so much.
He hadn't wanted to go to rehab again. He'd fought Cole on it, told him he'd rather just go off somewhere and drink himself to death. He didn't have anything to fight for anymore. Rayna was gone, any chance they'd had of fixing things was over the day she married Teddy Conrad at the country club. Somehow, though, Cole had convinced him he needed to do it, and so he'd gotten on that airplane. It was a long program – six months – and there were days he wasn't sure he could get through it.
He'd made it though. Painfully, frustratingly, inch by inch, he'd explored everything that led him to want to obliterate his memories with a bottle of whiskey. He'd learned coping techniques and forced himself to reach deep to uncover the pain he'd lived with all those years in Natchez. The pain that had brought him to this place, where he was trying to recover from feeling like he was worthless. By the time he walked out the door and saw Cole waiting for him, he'd felt as ready as he'd ever been to move forward.
He'd been back in Nashville now as long as he'd been gone. When he got back to town, he heard that Rayna had a baby, a little girl. It had hurt so bad when he'd found out. They'd talked, years ago, about having a family one day, and he knew she wanted to be a mama. But it hurt that she'd done it with someone else. He had wanted a drink that day. He hadn't been sober so long that he didn't remember how it felt to make all the pain go away with a few drags on that bottle of brown liquid. He still remembered how it felt going down – sharp at first, burning going down, but then a nice, comforting warmth would flow through him. By the time half the bottle was gone, the pain would be mostly gone too. He'd wanted that so bad.
He'd gone to a meeting instead. He'd talked about how much he wanted to take that drink. He'd talked about how hard it was to come back to Nashville and face everything he'd left behind. He'd talked about how this was his fifth try at this sobriety thing and, he knew, if he didn't get it right this time, he wouldn't make it. He had no idea how he was actually going to do this, but he knew he had to do it a day at a time, an hour at a time, every minute of every day.
He almost hadn't come back to Nashville at all. He'd seriously thought about going someplace else, starting over. He'd talked about it a lot during rehab. In the end, though, he thought all that would be was a way to run away from everything, just like he always had. He'd decided he had to go back and face all the demons he'd left there and overcome them. So he'd come home.
At first everything was hard. Even though Rayna had moved out and taken everything she'd brought with her long ago, it still felt like she was there, in every room, every corner. It had taken a long time to be able to sleep all night in the bed they'd shared. But he'd kept at it, remembering to take things one day at a time. He'd finally gone to Watty to help him find some work and now he worked regularly as a session musician. It wasn't the same as being a touring musician, but between that and the royalties he still got from the songs he and Rayna had written together, he was more than comfortable. But he hoped to catch on with someone, soon, and get back on stage again.
He'd heard through the grapevine that Rayna was going back out on the road. Her daughter was six months old and apparently she was ready. Although he knew there was no way they could work together again, he found himself sad to think about not being part of that. Her album had gone platinum and she was really taking off as an artist. They'd worked so hard for this and he hated that he'd screwed everything up so badly that he couldn't be a part of it.
He took a deep breath, trying to stop thinking about her. But she was everywhere. Almost without thinking, his fingers started to find a melody and words came to him. He reached for his notebook and started to write.
Her hat is hanging by the door / The one she bought in Mexico / It blocked the wind / It stopped the rain / She'd never leave that one / So, she can't be really gone….
He never really thought she wouldn't be part of his life. But she'd pushed him aside firmly and without looking back. She'd moved on with her life, finding someone who could give her what she'd always wanted – a family and a safe place to call home. He knew he hadn't been able to provide that for her, couldn't provide that for her. It wasn't for lack of wanting to, but his demons had been vicious and had run deep. It had taken everything he had to fight back this last time, knowing it might be the last opportunity he had.
When Coleman had picked him up and brought him back to Nashville, he'd told him he needed to make a life without Rayna Jaymes in it. You can't go back to that, Deacon. Think about every time you went back and she held you up as long as she could. I know you loved her – love her – but the two of you can't do this together. You gotta do this for yourself, on your own.
Cole had been right, he knew that deep down inside. But he was still doing this for Rayna, to show her he could. Even if he never got her back, he wanted her to know he could do this and be the man she knew he could be. The odds were against the two of them, but he would move forward and he resolved to make this work. For her.
I've used this song before, but it still feels right – "Can't Be Really Gone" by Tim McGraw.