It feels so good to be back on stage.
Rayna couldn't have hoped for a better start for the tour. The audience's response brings her to tears more than once, but what makes it special, what makes the journey she went through worth it is to have Deacon by her side.
She has never seen an arena as still and captivated as when they get to the acoustic interlude. It's only two songs during the first few shows as Bucky keeps insisting they need to test the audience's reaction before maybe adding some more to the setlist.
On the fourth show, a few people get lighters out during I Should've Known Better, and there's a domino effect. Little dots of light start popping up everywhere in the arena while she and Deacon are sitting on stools facing each other and sharing a mic.
It looks surreal, and it feels surreal.
She's got her hands on his knees, and not once during the whole song do her eyes leave his. It wasn't planned, but after the last note rings, she leans over Deacon's guitar to kiss him, and the audience goes... wild.
When they get off stage that night, Bucky is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. "Alright, we need to add another couple of acoustic songs," he surrenders.
Rayna grins from ear to ear.
—
She can't find Deacon.
She has lost track of him after soundcheck, and she has no idea where he went. It's not that she's worried, but he has disappeared before. There are precedents.
She chooses to go back to the stage, maybe he stayed behind with some other members of her band, but when she gets there, he's nowhere to be found. From the stage, she looks up in the nosebleed section, and while she can't be entirely sure because of the distance, she could swear it's Deacon sitting up there alone.
It takes her about ten minutes to find her way to him through the maze that is the arena's backstage.
"Are you lost? Because I think I am," she says when she finally gets to him.
He laughs, and she climbs up to his seat to kiss him. When she is about to settle in the seat next to him, he grabs her waist and pulls her to him so she ends up sitting on his lap. She kisses him again, in no rush this time.
"What are you doing up here?" she asks.
"I don't know, maybe I was curious about the view. Or maybe I needed some quiet time."
She frowns. "Are you okay? I mean with the craziness of it all?"
"I am, baby. It's just... it gets some getting used to it."
All the excitement and the rushing around and the constant noise contrast so vividly with the kind of life he's been living these last six years that sometimes it can get a little... overwhelming.
"If it gets too much, you'll tell me, right?"
"I'll kidnap you and we'll flee somewhere just the two of us for a while."
She grins. "Deal."
—
"UNCLE DEACON!"
The tour crew members all turn around at the sound of Scarlett's voice, and Rayna grins when she sees Deacon's niece running down the arena's backstage corridor. A blond woman, looking a lot less enthused than Scarlett, is walking a few steps behind her.
"Hey, cupcake!" Deacon beams as he scoops his niece up into his arms and kisses her cheek.
"Look what they gave us!" the girl squeals, proudly holding the pass hanging around her neck.
Deacon puts Scarlett back down as the blond woman catches up to them. "Hey, Bev." They hug, a quick and formal hug, and Deacon turns to Rayna. "Ray, this is my sister Beverly."
Rayna cracks a warm smile and holds out her hand. "I'm so happy to finally meet you, I've heard a lot about you."
"I've heard a lot about you, too," Beverly retorts, looking pointedly at Scarlett. She ignores Rayna's hand, and so Rayna awkwardly takes it back. Deacon hadn't lied when he'd told her about his sister.
"Y'all got here at the perfect time," Rayna says, "we've got soundcheck in 15 minutes." She turns to Scarlett. "Wanna hang around?"
The girl nods and grabs her hand as they all get moving. On the way to the stage, Scarlett tells Rayna all about the plane, and the hotel room, and the limo drive to the arena, and the man named Bucky who was waiting for them at the door to give them passes. She only stops talking once she realizes they're standing on the stage.
"Wow," she marvels as she spins round. Some of Rayna's band members are already there, and Scarlett goes to say hello and shake the hand of each of them, much to Rayna's amusement. "What's soundcheck?" she asks, then, when it occurrs to her she has in fact no idea what the word means.
"It's like a rehearsal," Rayna explains.
"We can watch you and Uncle Deacon play?"
"Yeah, and the cool thing is," Rayna adds while pointing a finger at the empty arena, "you can pick whichever seat you want!"
Deacon and Beverly, who had been walking a bit behind, finally join them on stage. One look at Deacon, and Rayna can tell they've been arguing. She waits until Scarlett has grabbed Beverly's hand and has dragged her away to go find the perfect seats before she asks Deacon what happened.
"It's nothing, just... the same usual crap. She complained because her boss wasn't happy she'd asked for a few days off to come here, and when I said I could call him to explain and maybe send him tickets, she told me she didn't need me to swoop in like some kind of white knight, whatever that even means."
"Is there something I can do?"
"No, baby. Don't worry about it. Let's just make sure Scarlett has a good time while they're here, and I'll deal with Beverly."
—
If there's one thing Rayna didn't miss, it's press junkets.
She has to spend all day sitting in a room answering the same questions over and over, interview after interview. Bucky is not far, keeping a constant eye on his watch to make sure everything unfolds according to schedule.
Today's topics include her breakdown, her disappearing for the last few months, her comeback, but there's one topic the journalists seem particularly interested in talking about, and that topic is named Deacon Claybourne.
The tour started three weeks ago, and the word has spread around already about her new guitarist and those stripped down songs the two of them are doing in the middle of the show.
The journalists all try to get more information out of her about how they met and the state of their relationship, but after what she'd had to endure from the press following her breakdown, she doesn't say a word more than is necessary.
—
"Do you two ever talk about something else than guitars?"
"Why would we want to?" Adria quips back, and Rayna rolls her eyes as she walks from the tour bus' fridge to the couch with her arms full of cans and snacks. She hands them around to Adria, Deacon and Bucky before she sits down with them.
She's relieved Adria and Deacon are getting along. Watty had warned her that, in his experience, there might be tensions, but Adria couldn't care less she now has to share the guitar spotlight with Deacon. They're similar in that regard, they're both people whose love of music by far outweighs their ego.
It's only been a month, but everyone on the tour treats Deacon like he's been part of it forever. Rayna can't say she's surprised. She calls it the Deacon Claybourne effect.
"Did Rayna tell you about how we met?" Deacon asks Adria then.
"She told me she saw you play in a bar."
"No, I mean the first time we actually met and talked to each other."
"I don't think Adria needs to hear about that," Rayna chimes in as she would prefer this particular story would stay between her and Deacon.
The only thing it achieves is to spark Adria's curiosity. "Oh, now Adria definitely needs to hear about that," she says, amused already.
Bucky lifts his eyes from the magazine he's reading, curious too. Rayna gives Deacon a warning stare. He ignores her as he's just too happy to have an excuse to talk about the day that changed his life.
"She showed up on my cabin's door one afternoon asking for... guitar lessons."
Adria bursts out laughing, and even Bucky can't refrain a chuckle.
"Thank you very much, now I'm going to hear about this until the end of time," Rayna pretends to complain to Deacon, but her smile gives her away.
She has noticed how Deacon brightens up when they talk about how they met, or the first time they wrote together or performed together, and she, too, can't help the sheer happiness that takes hold of her every time she thinks about it.
—
"I've got some good news and I've got some bad news."
Considering the emphasis on bad and the fact Bucky just asked her makeup team to get out of her dressing room for a minute, Rayna has a feeling she's not going to like where this conversation is heading. She's not used to bad news anymore. Everything has been going so well lately.
She settles in her chair, bracing for the worst. "You know the deal, Buck, always the good news first."
"Alright. So, the couple of articles that already came out following the press junket are fantastic. We couldn't have hoped for better press."
"Great." She pauses. "And the bad news?"
"I got an advanced copy of a third article that will come out tomorrow." He hands her the magazine he's been holding. "Page eight. It's a whole piece about Deacon."
"And it's... not good?"
"Well, actually most of it is great, they praise his guitar skills, the songs you wrote together, pretty much everything about this tour. The problem is... there are things in there, things about his past that I'm pretty sure he's really not going to be happy to see exposed."
"What kind of things?"
"His past troubles with alcohol. There are quotes from a guy who used to work on Merle's tour who shares a few anecdotes and says he's happy Deacon seems to have gotten all the help he needed. But the worst part is... they talk about what happened with his parents."
"Wait, what? No. No, no, no, no." She remembers how difficult it had been for him to tell her about it. She opens the magazine and flips to page eight. "How did they learn about it?"
"It's public knowledge. With a little digging, it's not hard to find out about it."
Bucky is too calm, and Rayna becomes suspicious all of a sudden. "You don't sound too surprised. I mean, you sound like you knew about it already."
He hesitates before he admits, "I did."
"What? How?"
"Tandy and I did some sort of... background check on Deacon."
Rayna is stunned. "When?"
"After the Opry, the first time you came to Nashville with him."
"I just... I can't believe this."
"Rayna, you had been through a pretty rough time, you were vulnerable, and we wanted to be sure Deacon wasn't someone who would... take advantage of that."
That's too much to process at the same time for Rayna, and so she gets up without a word and walks to the door.
"Wait, Rayna," Bucky tries to stop her.
She turns around. "Not... now, Buck. Later, but right now... I need to go find Deacon."
—
TBC