Chapter 4
"So what now?"
"I need you to come to the house. I need you to be my partner in this. We're gonna have to get her through it."
Rayna and Deacon are silent on the drive to her house, each looking out their own windows and sitting apart from one another, but still holding onto each other's hands, maintaining a connection.
"You ready for this?" she asks as they enter the house. He nods, still quiet, fighting every instinct to run.
Rayna excuses the sitter and together they climb the stairs to Maddie's room. Maddie continues staring out the window and doesn't look up when Rayna says her name.
"You doin' okay?" Deacon asks gently. She's surprised to find him standing there, her mom's friend, the man she thought of as her uncle who is now suddenly her dad. He's standing in her bedroom doorway, behind her mom, looking so strong and handsome in his sport coat. It was the only way she could imagine him, cool and put together. How could her mom have lied to this man, to both of them? How could he not know she was his daughter all of these years?
"You came back."
"I came back."
They share a brief smile, No one says anything for a while and they are startled back to reality when the door slams downstairs and Teddy enters the room soon after.
"You came, too." Teddy says upon seeing Deacon, stating the obvious.
Teddy is angry, smug. It's Deacon who takes the high road this time, keeping his cool, a fact that is not lost on either man.
It's finally Maddie who breaks the silence.
"So Deacon's my dad?"
"Biologically, yes, but I'm your father."
Rayna can feel the tension rising in the room. "The decisions that we made at that time were because we loved you."
"You knew she was pregnant and you married her anyway," Maddie shouts, not hiding her repulsion.
"Now wait just a minute-" Deacon attempts to interject in Rayna's defense but Teddy is already continuing, grasping at straws, "It didn't matter-"
"It didn't matter who my father was?"
"It was such a complicated time," Rayna says trying to calm the rising flames. Words are tossed back and forth rapid fire.
Teddy breaks down yelling at Rayna that he knew something like this would happen if she and Deacon became involved again. All Maddie sees is more deceit, rather than a father who is desperately afraid of losing his daughter.
"You lied! You lied to me and you lied to Deacon! This is all your mistake, my even being born!"
Hearing Maddie confess that she thinks she was a mistake is more than Deacon can handle and he can feel a lump rising in his throat, those emotions being all too familiar to him in the hands of his father, an abusive alcoholic. In his own mind he'd been a mistake, he never should have been born, and if his own thoughts weren't convincing enough his father was always quick to remind him. "I wish we'd never been stuck with these dam kids," his dad had fumed more than once in a drunken rage. He may have tripped over a toy, or found a dirty glass on the counter. It didn't take much to set him off, and Deacon often wished he hadn't been born rather than feel his father's wrath. He swore to himself at a young age that he'd never let another child feel that way if he could help it.
"No, sweetheart," Deacon says, attempting unsuccessfully to suppress his emotions. "Don't you ever, ever think that! You are loved. We all love you so much, and we are going to get through this, all of us, together." In that moment he realizes old resentments no longer matter. It's not about him and Rayna anymore, or Teddy.
It's Deacon who opens his arms to Maddie as she sobs into his chest, his own heart breaking over the pain his past actions had caused her. She folds into his arms. He'd do anything to protect a child, HIS child.
The End