Rayna

What are we gonna do now?

Deacon's words echoed in her head as she sat in her SUV outside her own house, trying to find some semblance of gathering herself together before she went inside. It was late, almost midnight. She'd been driving around in the dark for nearly two hours since leaving the Bluebird, and she was still no closer to having an answer to that question.

Damn you, Deacon, she thought miserably. Now we're a mess all over again.

Bucky had already called. What happened tonight? It's all over the gossip sites.

It was nothing, Bucky. Just a song.

Bucky knew her well enough, and she could tell he didn't believe that for a second.

Alright then, what about the tour? Is it still on?

She couldn't answer that either. She honestly didn't know.

All she knew right at that moment was that the two halves of her heart were once again at war, being dragged in completely opposite directions at the same time, and in the house in front of her were two sleeping little girls and a man who she'd promised herself to for better or worse. And right now, that side of the battle won.

With a shaky hand she reached up and flipped down the visor. She wiped away the tiny smudges around her eyes left from her tears, and she resolutely pushed it all away, back down deep to the bottom of her soul where it belonged. It was only more if they made it more. And she wouldn't let them.

"It was just one song," she repeated to her own reflection in the tiny mirror.

The eyes staring back at her called her a liar.

When she walked in the house, Teddy was still up, cleaning the kitchen from the dinner she'd missed after she'd left earlier. Or, what he was really doing, she knew, was pretending to clean the kitchen while he waited for her to get home. She stood in the doorway and watched him for a minute as he sipped a beer bottle and scrubbed the same spot on the marble repeatedly with a towel.

He looked up when she entered the kitchen, his face expressionless.

She couldn't read him at all anymore. It was sad, in a way. She'd never imagined they would end up with such a distance between them, even now as they stood four feet away from each other in the kitchen, it felt more like a mile. Where did we go wrong? she thought sadly. Our girls deserve better than this.

"Can I ask you something?" she spoke quietly.

He nodded, running his hands through his dark hair.

"Why did you marry me?"

The answer she got from him wasn't what she expected, or what she thought she wanted.

"Because you dazzled me," Teddy said without hesitation. "You always have."

It was disappointing, somehow, and it made her heart ache even more. She didn't know exactly what she'd been expecting him to say, but it hadn't been that. Because I love you would have sufficed. Because I can't live without you would have been golden.

She was tired, so tired of fighting all this. There was so many things she knew she should say, that needed to be said. She might not have been in love with Teddy when she married him, but he had been there for her in her most broken moments. They'd grown this life together, this family, and for her girls she'd given it everything she had. The trouble was, they'd been trying to fix it for so long, that she wondered if there was anything left to fix. Ever since the real estate deal had failed, since he'd told her about the money laundering Lamar had covered up, she couldn't seem to find a way to put her trust back in him like she once had.

Teddy cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't ask what you thought about me running for mayor, and it's not fair for you to be subject to inquiries and background checks. And if you…want to go on that tour, you should go."

Rayna nodded her head slightly. "I think I need to, Teddy. For my career, and…for us. I think we need some time apart to think about things. Where we want this marriage to go."

He let out a deep sigh. "I think you're right."

She leaned forward to hug him. "I love you," she said quietly, and she meant it. But as she said those words, another face ran through her mind, and the guilt crept in again. 13 years ago she'd chosen to marry Teddy when Deacon was in rehab.

13 years ago she'd also chosen not to tell Deacon that he was her daughter's father.

2 hours ago she'd sat in his truck doubting every decision she'd ever made.

"Come to bed?" Teddy asked when she pulled away from him.

"In a bit. I think I'm going to write for awhile. Get some…things off my mind."

Teddy looked disappointed, but it had been this way for months. He always went to bed first, she came in after he was asleep. They might as well be sleeping in separate rooms, and they both knew it, for as far apart as they were in that bed.

She missed it sometimes, that feeling of waking in the middle of the night with the warmth that came with someone's else's body tangled with yours, of their face in your hair or their breath on your neck.

It was how you slept when you were in love.

"Goodnight, Rayna."

"Night."

Teddy kissed her cheek, and headed for the stairs, and again, she watched him, the heaviness in his footsteps and his shoulders, like he carried the weight of the world.

What else is he hiding? Rayna thought, filled with dread. All these politicial plans with her father could mean absolutely nothing good.

Feeling a little defeated, she walked down the hall to her music room and sat at the piano for a long time with a notepad in front of her, the lights dimmed to a glow, plunking softly at the keys. This would save her. Music always did.

Before she knew it, it was 2 AM and she realized she'd been staring at the same two lines of words for an hour and she couldn't seem to build anything around them, but she couldn't get them out of her head either.

There are kingdoms to keep us apart….so we live out our lives in the dark

Love has a way

Of making you pay with your heart

"Well if that isn't the truth, I don't know what is," she said out loud to no one but herself. With a sigh, she grabbed a blanket off the back of the old sofa and wrapped it around herself, then collected her notepad and her phone and walked out to the patio. Sinking into a comfty lounge chair, she stared up at the sky, where the moon was high and bright tonight and every star was visible.

Biting her lip, she reached for her phone. It was late, but it didn't matter. She knew she'd never sleep unless she got this song out. It was always like this, became like an obsession, a musical blessing and a curse at the same time. Teddy had never understood it. Can't you just finish it tomorrow?

But he would.

She scrolled through the contacts until she found Deacon's name, intending to send him a message, when she noticed there was already one in her inbox from 2 hours ago. Almost right after she'd left him in the parking lot.

Talk? Call me.

Her heart hammered as she hit the call button.

He answered on the first ring, as if he'd been waiting.

"Hey," she said softly. "Sorry, it's late. Did you wanna talk?"

"Hey." His voice was low. "I just…well, I need to know about the tour, Ray."

The tour. Right, she realized. He didn't want to talk about the way just hours ago they'd sang an old love song and stared into each other's eyes like there was no one else in the room. He didn't want to talk about the fact that they'd barely avoided making a very big mistake in his truck earlier. He just wanted to talk about the tour.

She had already made up her mind about that, but she asked anyway, thinking of their argument at Soundcheck yesterday. "I need to know something too. If we don't do this…are you going out with Juliette's tour? Is that your plan?"

Deacon got real quiet on the other end of the line, and she bit her tongue at the sarcasm that threatened to her erupt from her throat, that he'd even think about still going on that tour with that poptart princess prancing around on stage throwing glitter everywhere, no how many damn expensive guitars she had delivered.

"I see."

"I play guitar for people who pay me money. I kinda gotta keep doing it, Ray. That's all this is."

Rayna knew exactly what he was doing. He was redrawing the line. In a way, she knew she should be relieved. But it still hurt a little.

"Right," she said softly. "That's what this is."

It wasn't fair to hold him back, and she knew that. She'd held him back enough already. But the thought of Juliette getting her hands on him in any way made her ridiculously nauseous.

"You know I'd never do that unless you tell me you don't need me, Ray."

I do need you, Rayna wanted to say. She didn't. Line redrawn.

"It's not off," she said quickly instead. "The tour. I need to do this, Deacon. For a lot of reasons."

Deacon got quiet again for a minute before he spoke. "Well alright then."

"So you're still in?"

"Yeah. I'm in."

"I'll have Bucky call you with details."

Rayna heard the buzz of a bumped guitar string, and smiled automatically.

"You writing?"

"Couldn't sleep," he conceded. "But can't seem to write much either."

Her heart lifted just a little bit. "I'm working on this lyric," she said before she could change her mind. "I'll send it to you. See what you can do with it. And I'm putting you on speaker." She typed the lines into a text message and sent it to him, and a few minutes later, he played her a couple notes, messing around with a tune a little. "How bout you start with this instead?" he offered.

The rivers between us run deep….

And dark as the secrets we keep…

We stand on the shores, time runnin by at our feet

Oh, the rivers between us run deep

"Deacon, that's perfect," she said reverently.

She could hear the little smile in his voice, the soft echo of laughter.

"Guess we still got it, huh?"

"Guess we do," she said lightly, trying to calm the butterflies that suddenly seem to have grown in her stomach. "Then again, the music was never our problem, was it?"

"Sure wasn't. Lemme run through what we got one more time, and then you should go on n' get some sleep. I can finish it. Those girls of yours get up early I bet."

She closed her eyes and soaked in the sound of listening to him play on the speakerphone, all the drama of earlier in the night forgotten.

They've certainly never written like this before, over the phone, and it made her want to laugh and cry at the same time as she added a few lines of her own when he paused.

Our love is like the moon.

Rising too fast, fading too soon

This night will soon be gone.

Help me hold on…

For tonight, she'd keep pretending it was just a song.

###############################

Rayna woke the next morning curled up on the sofa in the music room. There was already a message waiting in her inbox. Got it done, changed a few things. Play it for ya later.

A small smile crept across her face. 4:35 a.m. He must have been up all night finishing it.

Only a fellow musician would understand. Teddy certainly never had. Then again, she'd never understood his legal jargon and real estate contracts either.

Her shoulders stiff from sleeping on the sofa, she stood and stumbled down to the kitchen, hoping Teddy had already made coffee, because she was ready to mainline several cups.

She was shocked wide awake when she saw Peggy Kentor standing in her kitchen talking to her husband. What the hell?

Rayna hung back in the doorway for a second, watching. Teddy was shuffling through a stack of papers, and there something about the way Peggy put her hand on his arm…..

He wouldn't do that, she silently vetoed her thoughts. Teddy would never have an affair.

Then again, she'd never thought he would embezzle two million dollars either.

Not to mention it was all of 8 am on a Saturday morning and Peggy was in her kitchen looking like she'd just stepped off the pages of a Good Housekeeping ad, and here she was still wearing the same clothes she'd worn to the Bluebird last night, barefoot with no makeup on and her hair a rumpled mess.

I hope this doesn't get back to the country club crowd, Rayna thought wryly, looking down at herself.

"Well, this is a surprise!" she said with all the brightness she could muster for so damn early in the morning, announcing her entrance into the room, and running a hand over her hair to smooth it down.

Peggy had the grace to look slightly flushed as she took her hand off Teddy's arm. "Oh hello, Rayna. I didn't realize you hadn't left on your tour yet."

Rayna raised her eyebrows. I bet you didn't. And how the hell does she know about that anyway? "Wednesday. We leave Wednesday."

"Peggy's working at the campaign office," Teddy felt the need to explain. "She just dropped off a few papers I needed to sign."

"Oh, that's…nice," Rayna faked the biggest smile humanly possible. Bless your little heart, she thought silently. I bet that's exactly what the campaign needs.

The girls came tumbling enthusiastically down the stairs then, looking for their weekly dose of Saturday morning chocolate chip pancakes and donuts. With Maddie and Daphne fighting over which chocolate glazed was the biggest in the box, Teddy was left to referee, and Peggy bid them goodbye and headed for the door.

Rayna made a beeline for the coffee maker but she didn't miss out of the corner of her eye that Peggy seemed to pause for a minute before heading out, taking in their family before she left, a wistful look in her eyes.

A frown crossed her face. He wouldn't…would he? She didn't know if she'd be surprised. She didn't even know if it would hurt as much as it should. It struck her that Peggy would make a hell of a lot better politician's wife than she would. Suddenly Teddy's "okay" with her and Deacon going on tour together was starting to make a lot more sense.

After all, as Teddy liked to lay claim during their worst of arguments, she'd been having an "emotional affair" with Deacon for years. She always blew it off as him being ridiculous, but deep down she knew he was right.

"What's the matter?" Teddy asked over the volume. Daphne had turned on the kitchen radio, and Maddie was stirring the pancake mix at the counter while they danced their little hearts out.

She shook her head, and forced a smile. "Nothing. Just having a Saturday morning breakfast with my family, right?"

"It's nice, isn't it," he agreed. "The girls miss this when you're on tour."

The girls, she noticed. Not him. It was always only about the girls.

The song on the radio ended, and a popular DJ came on to speak.

"Well, if anyone was lucky enough to be present at the Bluebird Café last night, you were in for a treat, as there was a surprise appearance by the one and only Queen of Country Rayna Jaymes. We hear she totally blew the crowd away doing a surprise duet with-."

Rayna practically spilled her coffee reaching to hit the off button on the radio.

"Hey, I like that guy," Maddie protested. "He plays the Saturday Morning Top 10."

Teddy was staring holes through her now. "You went to the Bluebird last night? Who sang with you? I thought you said you were going to the studio."

But before she could answer, Daphne, anxiously awaiting her turn to pour the chocolate chips in the batter, hit the edge of Maddie's bowl with her arm, sending pancake mix running everywhere, and neatly diverting Rayna's attention to the crisis at hand.

"Mom!" Maddie cried, pointing accusingly at her sister. "Look what you did, dummy!"

"It was an accident," Daphne protested, her eyes growing teary.

"Come on, now," she said, turning her attention away from Teddy and back to the girls. "No calling names. Accidents happen, we can start over." The irony of those words was not lost on her as she met Teddy's eyes over the girls' heads.

In a little while the mess had been cleaned up, a very miffed Maddie had poured more mix into the bowl, Daphne had instead been sent to set the table, and the radio had been turned back on to a different station.

"You didn't answer me," Teddy asked a little while later as he paused, flipping pancakes onto a plate, glancing at the girls in the other room to make sure they couldn't overhear. "Who did you sing with last night, Rayna?"

She couldn't find the words to say it, but the look in his eyes was enough to signify he already knew, and he wasn't a damn bit surprised. She glanced at the kitchen door again, thinking of Peggy with her hand on Teddy's arm, ready to get her hooks into him the minute the bus rolled out of town.

My god, she thought, rather alarmed. What the hell are we even still doing together?

"Mom!" Daphne called from the dining room. "Don't forget the syrup."

The reason why, loud and clear.

Teddy gave her a pained look, then grabbed the plate and the bottle of syrup and stalked into the other room.

Her mind drifted back to when Watty had suggested the tour in the first place.

You and Deacon should go out on the road together.

Watty, that's a crazy idea!

Biting her lip, Rayna glanced towards the dining room doorway, and then reached for her phone laying on the counter and hit the button to reply to a 4:35 am message. I can't wait to hear it. See you at rehearsal later?

The reply was almost instant. She smirked to herself a little, thinking of Deacon and his distaste for technology. Funny him being a "texter" now.

Yeah, came the reply. I'll be there.

Suddenly this tour wasn't sounding like such a crazy idea at all.