A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers.

Songlist: I Hope You're Happy Now-Lee Brice and Carly Pearce

Chapter 27

Rayna didn't know how she had managed to keep her pregnancy a secret for the last four days, because she was so excited to tell Deacon about the baby she was about to jump out of her skin. True to her word Tandy had gotten her the best and most discreet OBGYN that money could buy. So far everything with the baby looked really good and there was no reason to believe that there would be any complications. That didn't mean she was ready for anyone outside her inner circle to know yet, though. She hadn't even told her husband yet and he needed to hear it before anyone else did.

Tonight they were out at a little Irish pub to have some time together without the girls. It was good for the four of them to take little breaks from each other so they didn't drive each other insane. If Deacon found it odd that she wasn't drinking he didn't make a big deal out of it.

"It's nice to take a little breather from our two teenagers, isn't it?" Deacon smiled across the table at her.

"It is. They drive me crazy, so I can only imagine that you're 'bout to go outta your mind bein' in a hotel with three women all summer." Rayna gave him a teasing smirk.

"It ain't been all that bad. At least I've gotten to spend time with three of the most important women in my life." He winked at her.

"Listen to you sayin' all the right things. If I didn't know any better I would think that you were sayin' these sweet things just to get me into your bed. Sugar, you don't have to work that hard. I wanna be in your bed as often as possible." She bit her lip.

He closed his eyes and groaned. "Woman, I swear that you're tryin' to kill me sometimes."

"I'd miss you five minutes after I killed you." She teased.

He squeezed a lime into his club soda and used the straw to stir it around. "I guess it's nice to know that while you think 'bout killin' me you won't go through with it, 'cause you'd miss me."

"I'm sure you feel the same way 'bout me more than is safe for you to admit." She sipped at her ginger ale. It was the only thing that could calm her stomach. She had forgotten what a pain in the ass it was to be pregnant.

"I have no comment." He smirked.

She reached across the table and patted his cheek. "You have gotten wiser with age, my love."

He encircled her wrist with his fingers and moved her hand to his lips so he could kiss her palm. "Took me long enough, didn't it?" He knew he shouldn't make light of his alcoholism, but if they didn't recognize his growth the pain of the past would eat them alive.

"I knew it would happen one day." She felt a slight blush creep up her cheeks. It amazed after all the years they had known each other and been together in one way or another that he still saw her as the same sixteen-year-old girl she'd been when they'd met.

"I had my doubts there for awhile, but I love where I am now." He gazed at her with nothing, but love in his eyes. It was like he didn't know that anyone else was in the room.

Rayna reached into her purse and pulled an envelope out. She slid it across the table. "That's for you."

Deacon arched his eyebrow and looked at her confused. "What's this?"

"Open it and you'll see." She took another sip of her ginger ale.

He opened the envelope and pulled out what looked like a backstage pass. He studied it for a minute. It wasn't until he got to the sonogram picture that it dawned on him what he was looking at. "Are you serious?"

She nodded and watched his face as he went through a range of emotions.

"You're sure?" His face lit up like a little kid on Christmas.

"Darlin', I'm positive. This is the one thing I can't be unsure 'bout." She chuckled softly.

He looked at the backstage pass again. It read 'The biggest act in country music coming soon'. "Babe, this is amazin'." He leaned over the table and kissed her passionately. "You have no idea how unbelievably happy I am right now."

"If you're as happy as I am right now than I think maybe I do have a clue." She rested her forehead against his.

"How far along are you?" He rubbed their noses together.

"About eight weeks. It looks like we made a honeymoon baby." She reported.

"Damn, I'm good." His chest puffed out with pride.

She laughed and rolled her eyes at him. "This baby is gonna be like a walkin' trophy for you." She swatted his chest playfully.

"It ain't like that. I'm just gonna be happy for this one to have my last name. You know that. We already talked 'bout this." He shrugged his shoulders. He took her hand and laced their fingers together.

She nodded her understanding of where he was coming from. "Regardless this baby is gonna have a momma and daddy that love it very much."

"I ain't gonna argue with that. I already love this baby so much. I can't even explain how I feel right now." The look on his face said he was over the moon.

She smiled at him brightly and squeezed his hand. "You don't have to try to explain. I know exactly what you're feelin' right now. I've felt it twice before when I found out that I was pregnant with the girls."

"I have never happier than I am right now." He kissed her hand again.

"Me either, babe." She winked at him again.

"When are we gonna tell the girls?" he asked.

"I thought that we could wait until we head home for the next leg of the tour. I don't wanna tell them too soon and have somethin' bad happen." She answered him.

"It'll just be our secret then." He gripped her hand in both of his.

"Well ours and my sister's." She corrected him.

He rolled his eyes and groaned. "I'm not surprised at all that your sister knows. Honestly, I'd be more surprised if she didn't." He and Tandy had made their peace with each other, but he knew that those two had to tell each other everything.

"Shut up," She laughed at him. She knew that he was poking fun at their need to share everything with each other rather than upset.

"I will not. Your sister wouldn't know how to act if I didn't say somethin' smartass when she comes up in conversation." He smirked at her.

"What do you say we go back to the hotel room and celebrate?" She suggested.

"Let me pay tab." He jumped up without another thought and went to the bar to pay the tab.

"Explain to me how it is that your uncle is the one opening a bar, but we are the ones who have to do all this work?" Will stood behind the bar of Deacon's new club.

"Someone has to stock the booze and Tandy elected us to do it." Scarlett took two bottles of whiskey out of a box and put them on top of the bar.

"I'm starting to learn that when Tandy says something it's not a suggestion and we are better off to just go with it." Gunnar walked over and sat a box on top of the bar. "That's vodka, just in case we didn't already have enough back there."

"You think that we are actually gonna get a chance to play on that amazing stage he had put in after all the work we've done?" Will lined up the bottles of alcohol on the island behind the bar.

"Do you think he has a choice in the matter? Rayna is gonna make him let us play here whether he wants to or not." Scarlett pointed out to him.

Gunnar was up on stage messing with the sound equipment. "She doesn't have to make him he would do it for her without her having to ask." He adjusted a mic stand. "I don't know who Tandy got to set up the audio in here, but they did a piss poor job."

"She just had some of the workers set it up. She knew that you would fix it if it were done wrong." Will informed him.

"How the hell do you know that?" Scarlett looked confused.

Will playfully threw a towel at her. "She got her hooks into me and has had me here all day. None of my so called friends came to save me from her."

"I was writing all day. I have Rayna's music room to myself and I'm enjoyin' it. I may have just led her to believe that I didn't have any free time today." Scarlett laughed at him.

"I wouldn't have saved you even if I could. Tandy scares the hell out of me and I'm not gonna test her." Gunnar wasn't afraid to admit his fear.

"Some friends y'all are." Will huffed.

"We just know how to cover our own asses. No one is gonna put themselves in line of fire with Tandy if they can help it." Scarlett pointed out to him.

"Cowards is what you two are." Will pointed menacingly at his friends.

"At least she ain't made it her business to meddle in your love life." Gunnar hooked some wires up to the sound board.

"No, I've just heard all about what she thinks the state of your love life should be." Will rolled his eyes.

"And that is why I avoid her as much as humanly possible." Scarlett shook her head at them both.

"You're the brains of this operation for a reason." Gunnar couldn't fault her on that one.

"Y'all stop flapping your jaws so we can get out of here. Uncle Deacon asked me to supervise setup Tandy took that to mean the three of us could be used as slave labor." Scarlett tried to hurry them along.

"Do we have to do anything in the recording studio?" Gunnar asked.

"No, she actually got professionals to handle that. She seems to think it's ok to cut corners over on this side and let us set up." Scarlett answered him.

"Scarlett is right, the faster we unpack these boxes and stock the bar the sooner we can get this over with." Will agreed with the smarter of the two.

Rayna sat in her dressing room waiting for her turn to go on stage. Sadie had just finished up her set and it was Luke's turn now. Deacon was out prepping with the band and giving her a minute of peace. Since the moment he'd found out she was pregnant he had been hovering around her like a helicopter.

"Come in!" She called out when she heard a knock on the door.

Sadie walked in with her ear monitors around her neck sipping a bottle of water. "I hope you don't mind some company before you go out there."

Rayna flashed her a big smile. "I don't mind at all. You killed it out there tonight, girl."

Sadie helped herself to a seat. "Thanks,"

"So, how does it feel to be back out tourin' again?" Rayna asked her.

"It was a little hard to get back into at first, but now that we have been doing it for awhile it's like riding a bike." Sadie replied.

"You happy that I came and pulled you out of that cabin now?" Rayna's arched eyebrow and smirk said I told you so without saying the words.

"I'm so happy that you showed up when you did. Like I said I had been wanting to get out of there and back to Nashville for awhile. You just gave me the push I needed to leave. you were right, Pete didn't get to take the career I've worked so hard for away from me too." Sadie could admit when she was wrong.

"I knew that you'd love it as soon as you got back in the game again. It was the same way for me after the accident. It has been a lot to get back into, but I never feel more like myself than I do when I'm up on that stage." Rayna leveled with her.

"When I see you up on that stage, it's hard to tell that you ever stepped away." Sadie told her.

"Like you said, it's like ridin' a bike. I may not be able to do much, but I know what to do when I get up on that stage. It's like a return to normalcy for me. It's the only constant that I've ever had in my life. No matter what is goin' on in my personal life I've always been able to count on bein' able to get up on stage and forget everythin' for a couple hours." Rayna opened a bottle of water and took a sip from it.

Thankfully she wasn't having any morning sickness tonight. The baby had been taking it easy on her the last couple of days. The worst thing in the world was to have to get on stage while fighting the urge to puke.

"You've been doing this so long you should be able to do it in your sleep." Sadie commented.

"I have damn near done this in my sleep before. We traveled all night by bus and then I had radio interviews and press stuff. By the time I got on stage I had been up for almost twenty-four hours. I still don't know how we managed to make it through that show without makin' any mistakes." Rayna replied.

"We were in our twenties and we had unlimited energy then." Deacon leaned up against the doorjamb with his arms crossed over his chest.

"I'd like to hear the stories you have." Sadie told him. Those two had become fast friends.

"I'm not allowed to tell most of the stories I have. The queen of country hasn't always been as refined as is she now." Deacon couldn't resist the urge to tease his wife.

"You don't want to start somethin' with me when I have all the dirt on you from back then." Rayna smirked at him.

"Darlin', there really ain't no more of my dirty laundry to be aired out. Everyone has done heard all the bad shit I did when we were younger. And what they didn't know they found out in a court of law." Deacon commented in jest. Even though he was only joking there was still a hint of pain in his words. It was likely that he would never truly be over what Maddie had said about him up on the stand.

"Sweetheart, you're you, you really don't care what anyone thinks of you." Rayna reminded him.

"So?" Deacon smirked and shrugged his shoulders.

Sadie looked between the two of them. "Has anyone ever told you how cute and how annoying y'all are together?" She laughed.

"I think we mighta heard that a time or two. It ain't my fault. I blame the redhead in this relationship. She has this really bad habit of makin' me forget that there is anyone else in the room." Deacon gazed lovingly at Rayna.

Rayna just smiled and shook her head at him. "Sadie, you better get your writin' partner before he gets on my bad side."

"I'm not getting in the middle of that. I know better than that." Sadie threw her hands up in a sign of surrender. She and Deacon had been writing together since they had been out on tour. They were cranking out some really dynamite stuff that needed to be recorded as soon as they got back to Nashville.

"You are a smart woman. I'm a man and I'm sayin' this. This is how I know women are smarter than men. No woman wants to get in the middle of what me and Ray have goin' on. These stupid ass men on the other hand think it's a good idea to try to get between us." Deacon couldn't help himself he had to slip that in there.

Rayna just arched her eyebrow at him and then she looked over at Sadie. "I don't know whether to be offended, take the compliment, or kick his ass. I leave the jury out on that one until later. It'll depend on how he does up on stage."

Sadie just left. "You two have no idea how funny you really are together."

"You know there are two places that you don't have to worry 'bout my performance. Up on stage and in bed." Deacon shot her a saucy wink.

Sadie gasped in shock. A part of her couldn't believe that he'd just said that in front of her. So far they had done their best to be on their best behavior in front of their opener.

Rayna laughed heartily. "Sadie, I know that you've heard the stories from the people in my band who are still around from the old days. We don't edit ourselves and there has been more than a time or two that we have stopped in the middle of sound check to go find a janitor's closet."

"We try to behave better now, but back in the day we had no shame and no care for who knew what 'bout our sex life. We couldn't keep our hands off each other and we didn't give a damn who knew it." Deacon backed his wife up.

"We were teenagers up into our mid-twenties." Rayna nodded her head.

"You two are cute, annoying, and gross all at the same time. Yet I can't help hoping that I one day find a man that loves me the way Deacon loves you." Sadie retorted.

"Please don't do the world any favors like that. I already have one Rayna and Deacon to deal with I don't need another set making messes for me to clean up. And it would be even better if you could do me the favor of not jumping into a bad business deal with some Silicon Valley tech billionaire." Bucky walked up and made his presence known.

"Sadie, don't listen to Buck. We have just traumatized him with all our bullshit over the years. He's not really that cynical." Deacon had to laugh. He and Rayna had put Bucky through more than any manager should have to go through. The list of things that they had him take care of htat weren't in his job description were plentiful.

"Buck, did you need somethin'?" Rayna asked.

"No, I was just making sure that you are ready to go when it's your turn." Bucky replied.

"Buck, I'm a mess, but that doesn't mean I'm unprofessional. You know that I will always be ready to go on stage." Rayna reassured him.

"That's what I like to hear. I just want to keep things running smoothly. If I don't then I will have to hear about it from your sister. We both know how she is and why we don't want that." Bucky squinted his eyes and rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. He could already feel a headache forming and nothing remotely stressful had even happened for a couple days.

"We are behavin' ourselves lately. You have nothin' bad that you have to report back to Toby." Deacon promised him.

"At this point if I thought that calling Toby on either of you would do any good then I would. But, I know better than that. If I were to call Toby that would only make things worse. I'll get outta your hair now." Bucky turned on his heel and walked away before anyone could say anything that was going to make his job anymore difficult.

"We really need to give that man a raise." Rayna laughed.

"Yeah we do. I think he's earned it by now." Deacon agreed with her.

"Have you two always been this hard on him?" Sadie looked between the pair.

Deacon and Rayna both nodded and laughed. "Pretty much," they said in unison.

"At least the two of you are honest." Was the only thing that Sadie could say to them. She wasn't quite sure how to handle them, but she knew she felt good about having them in her corner. She couldn't help noticing the difference between how Rayna had acted when she was with Luke and how she acted now that she was married to Deacon. Now she seemed to be her authentic self rather than when she was Luke and it had seemed like she constantly had some stage personality on.

"That's one thing we have goin' for us anyway." Deacon smirked at her.

The crowd went absolutely wild when Rayna and Luke stepped on the stage to do their encore. Deacon stood back by the band and fought the urge to roll his eyes. It took everything he had in him to keep his feelings in check when his wife was singing duets with her former fiancé.

The only consolation he got was that he got to be on the stage with them every night, but that still hadn't been enough to keep rumors from sparking that the King and Queen of country music were going to get back together. He really didn't think that he had to worry about his wife cheating on him, the rumors just got on his nerves more than anything. It was like no matter what he did he would never be good enough to be the guy by Rayna's side.

He watched as Rayna and Luke both waved to the crowd and got them pumped up. He couldn't help cringing when he heard Luke yell out 'Wheels Up'. It was like he had PTSD from hearing it so much when he'd been out on tour with him.

"Rayna, what do you say we do one of the new ones for 'em tonight?" Luke suggested and the crowd cheered wildly.

"I think we can do that for the people." Rayna strutted across the stage to where Deacon stood. "Babe, hit 'em with that new one you just wrote for us."

Deacon smirked and started strumming his guitar and the band picked up on their cue. He had written this especially for Rayna and Luke.

Rayna turned away from her husband as she started to sing. "It's all on me it's my mistake. I said I don't love you a little too late. But I guess they're ain't never a right time and I don't know why it's called a goodbye."

Luke bobbed along with the beat waiting for his cue to come in.

"Go run my name into the ground tell everyone you know just how, how I slammed the door on our forever, but I promise you it's for the better." Rayna was absolutely amazed at how perfectly her husband had been able to put her feelings down without her ever really telling him what they were. She knew that he was a good songwriter, but this song was great even for him.

"I hope you find what you were lookin' for. I hope your heart ain't hurtin' anymore. And you keep movin' I figured it out. And you don't hate me somehow. 'Cause I hope you're happy now." Rayna and Luke sang in unison.

"Who knew this heart could break this hard or a love like ours could fall apart? Without so much as warnin' I thought that I was what you wanted." Luke sang. He didn't know how Deacon had gotten into his head to write this.

"Well, I guess you found what you were lookin' for." They sang together again.

"I guess my heart ain't worth it anymore. I'm a wreck, I'm a mess, and I ain't got nothin' left and so I hope you're happy now." Luke wailed into his mic.

Deacon stepped forward and played a powerful guitar solo. This song had come together better than he could have hoped for in his wildest dreams. He'd done both the lyrics and the arrangements on his own.

"I hope you found what you were lookin' for." Rayna sang the words sincerely.

"I guess my heart ain't worth it anymore." Luke sang in answer.

"Hope you've been movin' on all figured out and you don't hate me somehow." They sang together.

"I'm a wreck, I'm a mess," Luke stared at Rayna as he sang that line.

"And I ain't got nothin' left. So, I hope you're happy now. Happy now, oh, I hope you're happy now." They finished the song together and after they had finished the crowd erupted in applause.

"Damn, babe, I didn't know that song was going to be that good or that heartfelt." Rayna commented to her husband as they walked off stage.

Deacon handed his guitar to one of the roadies and put his arm around her waist. All I had to do was think 'bout how it felt for me to lose you and I ran with it."

"I know that it can't be easy for you to see me prance around stage with him every night and I want you to know how grateful I am to you for lettin' me do it. I wouldn't be doin' this if it weren't what was best for us and for the label. I didn't listen to you once before when you told me not to do somethin' and that's why we are in this mess now. I just want you to know how much I appreciate you for bein' so strong for me through all this." Rayna leaned her head against Deacon's shoulder.

"You ain't gotta thank me for that. I'm just bein' a good husband. I know how much this label means to you. More than that our girls need to learn from their momma that a woman can own a business and succeed. I ain't thrilled with this arrangement, but that is ok. We will get through it. This is just a drop in the bucket when to compared to everythin' else that we've been through in the last year." Deacon kissed the top of her head and then he whispered. "How's Baby Claybourne today?"

"You really are so damn perfect sometimes." She smiled contently. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve a man who was so damn good to her sometimes. "Baby Claybourne is doin' good. You don't have a thing to worry 'bout, daddy." She whispered back to him. She loved that she was getting to go through this with him. It felt like something they both needed to completely heal from their past and the things that they had put each other through.

A/N: Here is the next chapter. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm so sorry for the long wait and I promise that I'm going to try to be better. Until next time please review.