A/N: part 2/5.

(and as a side note: Many commenting on my older stories have asked me if I still get notifications, and indeed I do - they're sent right to my inbox, and they make me so happy & stir inspiration. Thank you!)


It's the hottest day of the year, the sun beating down onto the asphalt, sending it right back into the air in a cycle that feels so very much like Rayna's life these days: inescapable, suffocating, cloying.

With a shake of her head, she parks her brand new SUV outside of the house that has become so familiar to her over the last year and a half and turns around to glance in the back seat where Maddie sits in a booster seat, looking excitedly out the window.

The sight makes Rayna's heart lurch in her chest already, but she pastes on a bright smile anyway, "You ready, sweet girl?"

Maddie turns and beams, nodding her head enthusiastically, "Ready, mama!" She reaches over and unhooks her seatbelt, "I'm gonna play guitar just like Uncle Deacon!"

Rayna swallows and slides her sunglasses on top of her head, trying to figure out for the seventeenth time in three days when exactly her little girl had gotten so big. She says all her letters now, her sweet speech impediment finally gone, and she's been insisting more and more lately that she's a big girl.

"Yes," Rayna agrees, unhooking her own seat belt and opening the car door, "You sure are," she closes the door and takes a steadying breath before she opens the back door, "God help me," she mutters under her breath as she scoops Maddie out of the car and into her arms.

The little girl gets heavier each day, but Rayna still takes every chance she can to hold her, knowing she won't have much longer, knowing that some day will be the last. So even though the sweat slicks her body immediately as she hoists Maddie onto her hip, closing the car door with her elbow, Rayna refuses to put Maddie down until they're standing on Deacon's front porch.

The nerves roil in her stomach as she glances around, heart pounding in her chest – despite how often she comes here now, it somehow never gets any easier, there's always this moment where she's right back where they used to be.

There had been years where she thought she and Deacon would never be in a good place – a truly good place – again. Years where she thought he'd always look at her like she betrayed him, years where she thought she'd always feel in her heart that he betrayed her.

When the truth, she knew, was that they'd betrayed each other – and how does anyone ever come back from that? From that awful truth that says you chose something else over me?

But, they had. They had come back from that place, and it hadn't been easy. They'd clawed and fought their way back from the edge of a cliff neither of them wanted to go over – from the abyss of anger and blame and hurt so raw it could bleed anew years into the future. And now things felt normal between them – normal, that is, if she ignored the sexual tension that was always near a fever pitch when she was alone with him.

But that had always been their normal – this charge, spark, had always surged between them, even when they were at their worst. Sometimes, especially then.

When they were at their last days as lovers, only their bodies could talk to each other – could whisper apologies with skin on skin where the secrets and lies between them didn't matter anymore. In those last days, nothing else could touch them except each other because nothing else mattered except their hands and mouths and the shameless ecstasy they always found when they were together like that.

So the way Deacon makes her blood sing through her veins even now is nothing new – it's old hat, and she does with it what she does with most things in her life these days: compartmentalizes it. Pretends it doesn't exist or redirects it somewhere else, which might be why her career is flourishing so much despite having a toddler at home in addition to a six-year-old who thinks she's too big for her britches half the time.

Maddie's tiny hand in hers, Rayna raises her fist to knock but the door pulls open before she connects.

"Hey," Deacon says, smiling at her as his eyes rake quickly and, she notices, appreciatively over her body, "Hot outside?"

His gaze is on her chest and she glances down, noticing where the fabric has stuck to her skin and she pulls it away, fanning herself with the material before she arches a brow at him, "As hell."

His eyes connect with hers and she can feel every cell in her body alight with the intensity of his gaze, "Looks like heaven to me," he stares at her for just a beat longer wearing that same teasing grin she'd come to love so well on him before crouching down to Maddie's level, "Hey, Little Maddie! Are you ready to learn the guitar today?"

Maddie nods and squeals in excitement and Deacon laughs, standing up and pulling the door wider so they can pass through. It takes her a moment to slake off the lust he always sends coursing through her body when he teases her like that, but she finally recovers and moves forward, trailing behind Maddie.

"Thanks for doing this," Rayna says as she steps inside his house and tries not to revel in the fact that she's enveloped in him in this space.

"My pleasure," Deacon closes the door behind him and turns to look at Rayna, still smiling, and she pretends not to feel the spark that shoots down her spine.

His eyes are clear and bright, the blue not the least bit faded or hollow as he stares at her and she is struck by an overwhelming need to reach out and touch his cheek. To confirm that this is real – that he is real. Her fingers itch with the urge, but she balls her hand into a fist at her side instead and also resists the urge to drop to her knees and thank every god she's ever heard of that he can look at her like that again – bright-eyed and beautiful: sober.

She'd been scared for so many years that she'd never see him like that again, and then when she had, she'd felt the near-constant fear that it would go away – that he'd drown it in a bottle again, and the boy she once knew – the one who taught her how to love and lust – would be lost, but forever this time. She's only just started trusting it, trusting that it won't go away to a whim, to a bad day, to a memory, and she can't help but feel how much she'd missed this version of him.

And if she can't have him all the ways she wants him, she will take him like this – god, she will take him like this.

Deacon leads them into the living room where a guitar case sits with a big pink bow on top of it. It takes Maddie all of two seconds to notice it and she runs over to the couch, her tiny fingers reverently touching the edge of the guitar case.

"Is it for me?" The awe in her voice tugs at Rayna's heart and she can feel the tears welling in her eyes as she watches her daughter move to trace the bow.

Deacon nods and walks over to the couch, unlatching the guitar case and pulling out the instrument, "It sure is, sweetie." Holding the guitar in one hand, he picks Maddie up with careful ease and sets her gently down on the couch before he places the guitar face-up in her lap, "Lord knows we couldn't have your Momma picking out this guitar."

"Hey!" Rayna protests, but she's smiling as she steps into the living room and leans on the arm of the couch, "I can pick 'em just fine."

"Oh," Deacon nods as he closes the guitar case and sets it off to the side, "That's right. It was just the playin' 'em that always tripped you up," he grins at her, shooting her a wink before he drops down to his knees in front of Maddie.

Maddie, oblivious, runs her hands over the six strings, a huge grin on her face, "Thank you!" She exclaims, then moves to pluck each string one by one, "Thank you, Uncle Deacon!"

Deacon reaches out to ruffle Maddie's hair before he props the guitar up in her lap and sits down on the coffee table in front of her and Rayna's heart stutters in her chest at the sight – at the words 'Uncle Deacon.'

And suddenly, that elephant is in the room again – the one Deacon doesn't even know exists, and she feels the weight of it surrounding her. Because no matter how much better things have gotten, there is always this between them. There will always be this between them. This unspoken thing that makes her feel sick to her stomach because none of them deserve this.

Deacon doesn't deserve it, Rayna doesn't deserve it, and Maddie damn sure doesn't deserve it, but it's all there is now – this secret, this elephant, this unbearable thing between all of them that he can never know.

Deacon flips the guitar upright in Maddie's lap and positions her tiny fingers on the fretboard; her hand can't wrap around the whole thing but she looks so fascinated and intent as he guides her hand with a pick grasped tightly between her small thumb and forefinger, over the strings.

Despite being perfectly in-tune, it makes a terrible noise, but Maddie grins and kicks her legs out, and does it again this time without Deacon's help.

"Good job!" Deacon praises her even though it sounds even worse than before, leaning forward as he pulls his hands back and watches her fumble around before turning to Rayna, a playful smirk spreading across his face, "She's better than you already."

An unexpected laugh hisses out of Rayna and she rolls her eyes, "Shut up."

Deacon smiles, "Wonder where she got it."

It's a joke – she can see that it's a joke, because Maddie can barely even hold the guitar, let alone play it. But it drags something up in her, a latent sense of longing for the truth that is always there inside of her, but sometimes closer to the surface than others.

And as Deacon turns his attention back to Maddie, focusing on getting her comfortable with just holding a guitar that's nearly as big as she is, Rayna feels the longing pulling the words up her throat – from you, Deacon – but before they can float into the air between them and change everything about all of their lives, she swallows them back down because she can't risk it.

Rayna can't risk her relationship with her daughter, yes, but Maddie's young enough that she would probably adapt to the news with relative ease. The truth, the unbearable heartbreaking truth is that Rayna also can't risk him. She can't see Deacon like that again – he won't survive it, and neither will she.

It makes her the worst kind of coward, she's sure, but she can't lose him again, and when she's honest with herself, she can't envision a world in which this secret she's kept him from – this daughter she's kept him from – doesn't tear him apart from the inside out, the same way it's done to her.

And she loves him too much – even still, even now – to take a chance. So, she lets the secret sit heavy on her heart as she turns to stare at them, seeing all the best parts of both of them in her daughter. In their daughter, and she knows: she will let the secret utterly destroy her before she lets it have a chance to destroy him.

So she holds her tongue, and watches the man that breathed life into her so long ago teach his daughter how to play the guitar.

The lesson lasts only as long as Maddie's attention span, and then she's running around his living room, a bounding ball of energy, and for a moment Rayna sees so clearly the life they could have had together if only he'd been sober, if only she'd tried harder, if only a lot of things.

Deacon must notice the change in her, the melancholy that slides itself under her skin, because he steps forward, his fingertips lightly brushing her elbow, "You okay, Ray?"

And if that just isn't the question of the century: no, I'm not. I haven't been for six years. Never have been since I watched you destroy that cabin again and every chance at a life as a family we ever had with it.

But she just smiles and nods, "Yeah," she glances at Maddie, currently spinning in circles in Deacon's living room, her head jutted up towards the ceiling, arms spread out wide as she wobbles, "Sorry about that."

Deacon looks at Maddie where she's spinning and when she falls to the ground with a shriek and a giggle, Deacon just laughs, "Don't have to apologize to me. She's got a lot of energy," he grins as Maddie gets back up, inclining his head, "Just like her Momma."

Rayna tilts her head in silent question.

"Not a single thing could ever keep you down; nothing ever breaks you. You just get right back up." Deacon explains, looking at her with a type of awe she knows she doesn't deserve.

Rayna feels her heart clench in her chest because he doesn't know. He wasn't there for the nights she spent crying herself to sleep, for the nights she felt so lonely in another man's arms, in another man's bed – he isn't there for the nights she still does.

Deacon doesn't know that losing him very nearly did break her. He doesn't know that there are times she's not so sure that it didn't, after all, times when she feels like only a hollow shell of herself and whoever she was before she met him, half-asleep.

When she doesn't respond, just searches his eyes for something she shouldn't want to see there and knowing she will find it the same way he would find it in hers if he ever looked, Deacon glances away, running his hand over the back of his neck. "So. Tour next week. I know we've been rehearsing a lot lately, but you ready?"

He smiles at her, and this she can do – "Oh, I'm always ready." She lets the flirtatiousness seep into her voice because as strange as it is, that feels like safe ground between them after the minefield they've just navigated.

"I do remember that," Deacon says, his voice dropping to the timbre that always made her toes curl no matter what he was saying. She isn't surprised to find that it still works – of course it still works.

Rayna opens her mouth to reply, but Maddie comes barreling at her legs, throwing her arms around them and hugging both of them as tightly as her little arms can manage, "Mama! I'm hungry! I'm sleepy!"

Rayna glances at Deacon and smiles apologetically, "That's our cue," she bends down and picks Maddie up, propping her on one hip, "Thanks again for doing this."

"Sure thing," Deacon says, reaching out and running his hand lightly along Maddie's cheek – Maddie smiles and burrows her head against Rayna's neck, "She's a natural."

Rayna's heart cracks in her chest, because Maddie really, really is. Rayna walks to the door, her arms tightening around Maddie before she turns to face Deacon as he opens the door and the hot air rushes in to greet them, "See you at rehearsal tomorrow?"

"I'll be there," Deacon says, but there's a weight to his words, a heaviness to his gaze that makes her stop and stare at him on his porch.

She nods, and he reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, his rough fingers brushing the shell of it and she shivers despite the oppressive heat surrounding her.

"I'm not going anywhere, Ray," Deacon whispers, casually leaning against the doorframe, his thumb hooked in the front pocket of his jeans, "Not ever again."

Rayna feels the tears building in her eyes and she blinks them away, dropping her sunglasses over her eyes as she nods again, staring at him for a long moment before she turns and walks back to her car, silence on her tongue because there are so many things she can't say.

Things that have haunted her for years, things that will always haunt her: I'm sorry, she's yours, I love, love, love you – I never stopped, and god help us, I never will.