"I thought you'd decided you wanted to keep it small."

Adria and Rayna were perched on stools, their back to the bar, sipping champagne while surveying the room. They were in a beautiful rustic barn which, for the night, served as the event space for Rayna and Deacon's wedding anniversary celebration. The place was tastefully decorated, there were about a dozen tables in the middle, bars on each side of the room, a small stage with a live band, and a currently crowded dance floor.

"That was the plan."

"What happened to the plan?"

"We thought, 'Hey, we could just invite a few more people,' but then it lead to, 'In that case, why not also invite these other people, and those other people,' and... here we are."

Adria let out a quiet laugh. "Well, I think it turned out for the best. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and no one has tried to kill each other yet," she said, pointing one finger at Lamar and then at Watty.

Both men had agreed to attend, and even if they had proven in the last weeks that they were able to stay cordial around each other in public, Rayna wasn't going to push her luck; she'd chosen to seat them at different tables on opposite sides of the room.

Six people Rayna had chosen to seat at the same table, however, were Scarlett, JT, Juliette, Avery, Gunnar and Will. She thought there was potential for some beautiful collaborations among that bunch and they shouldn't let the past stand in the way of making great music.

As Rayna cast a look around, she reckoned Adria was right. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Everyone except Liam who, she'd just noticed, had apparently been dragged against his will to the dance floor by her aunt Vivianne.

"I think someone needs to be rescued," she remarked with a tilt of her head in Liam's direction.

Adria turned to look. "Nah, he's doing just fine," she said, amused.

She and Liam had started seeing each other after that evening at the bar back when they were all recording Rayna and Deacon's album. Adria wasn't one to blab much about her relationships, but it was obvious things were going great between the two.

"Can't blame Aunt Vi, though," Rayna commented, "those black jeans are really working for him."

Adria playfully pretended to be shocked. "Excuse me, but is this the kind of thing one is allowed to say on the day of her wedding anniversary?"

"Honey, Deacon and I just had sex in a dressing room upstairs twenty minutes ago, so you really don't need to worry about us."

Adria choked on her champagne before she and Rayna looked at each other and both broke down laughing. "Happy anniversary to you," she teased, clinking her glass to Rayna's.

"Happy anniversary to me."

"Can't believe you guys have been married for 20 years. Still remember the day Deacon showed me and Vince the ring at the cabin."

"Yeah." Rayna smiled.

What a long, strange trip it had been. It had been messy and sad sometimes, and it had been painful, but always with so much love. Deacon was the heart and soul of... everything. Her creative process, her life. She couldn't even begin to imagine what it would have been like without him in it.

—

november 1996

—

"Rayna?" Bucky called gently.

She had no idea how long she'd zoned out. Buck and the funeral director, whose name she'd forgotten already, were looking at her like they were expecting an answer.

"I'm sorry, I just... I think I'm gonna need a minute here."

"Of course," the director said from behind his desk. "Would you prefer we continue later? So you can take time to think about all this?"

"If you don't mind."

"Of course not, Mrs. Jaymes. Mr. Dawes has my card, you can call me whenever you want."

"Thank you very much."

They all got up, and Bucky guided Rayna with his hand on her back as the director saw them to the door.

Once outside, she stopped on the sidewalk. She was numb. She was going through the motions, but nothing felt real. Her head had been in a fog for the last 24 hours, since the moment the doctor had walked into the hospital waiting room and had told them Vince hadn't made it out of surgery.

She grasped her manager's arm as he stood facing her. "Thanks, Buck, for doing this with me."

"Of course, Ray. What do you want to do? Do you want to discuss all this with Deacon, and we can come back here later?"

"I can't." Her voice broke. "Deacon, he's been... Let's just say I have to do this alone."

Vince had almost no relatives left. He had a half-sister that he hadn't talked to in years and that Rayna had tried to call. She'd told Rayna she wasn't even sure she could come to the funeral. His chosen family, though, all his closest friends, were in Nashville, and it made sense he would be buried there.

"Hey, let's walk over there," Bucky suggested, gesturing at the park on the other side of the road. "Let's sit and regroup for a minute, alright?"

"Okay."

They found a bench, not too far into the park, and sat in silence. It was freezing cold for the season, and there weren't many people around.

"I don't think Deacon will ever get over this," Rayna blurted after a while.

Bucky covered her hand with his. "Grief is complicated," he said.

"No, it isn't just grief..." Her voice quavered, she felt tears threatening to spill over. "Deacon blames himself. He says he made Vince drive drunk. I know him, Buck, he won't... he won't let it go." She properly broke down then, sobbing between words and gasping for air. "He'll try to punish himself. He'll go to that dark, dark place, and I'm afraid... I'm afraid he won't come back from it."

It was all too much. Between her own grief over losing Vince and her distress over Deacon, it was all too much.

"Ray..."

"It will destroy him, Buck, it will destroy us," she breathed out.

Bucky slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He didn't say anything, he only held her while she cried, for all she had lost and for all she was desperate not to lose.

—

"My sister and I are gonna sing a song we wrote especially for tonight. Grandpa helped us with it. Mom, Dad, this is our gift to you," Maddie announced as she and Daphne broke into the intro of Willing Heart.

For a second, Rayna froze. "Grandpa helped us," her daughter had just let slip. She cast an apprehensive look around, trying to gauge people's reaction, before she chastised herself. How could they possibly guess? Everyone who didn't know the truth had probably only assumed Maddie was talking about Lamar. She relaxed, focusing on her daughters' performance.

In the middle of the song, Deacon leaned over from his chair to whisper in her ear. "These two singing together are the sweetest damn sound in the world."

"I know," she murmured, with a gentle kiss and the biggest grin. She reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together.

When the last notes rang out, the room erupted in deserved applause. Maddie slipped her guitar off as she and her sister got down the stage, and she cautiously put it back in its case. This guitar had belonged to her grandmother, she knew how special it was to Rayna and Tandy, so she always took extra care of it.

"It was so good, y'all," Rayna praised when the girls walked back to the table.

Maddie, who was sitting next to Rayna, turned to her, lowering her voice. "I'm sorry for what I said at the beginning, I only realized afterwards..."

"It's okay, sweetheart." Rayna looked over at Watty's table and noticed the chair to his left was empty. "I'll be back in a minute," she told Maddie.

She made her way between the tables until she was sitting next to him.

"They were so good," he raved before she had time to say anything.

"Right? Thanks for helping them out."

"I barely did anything, they'd already written most of it. They've got all your and Deacon's talent. If Maddie takes after you, in a year or two, nothing will stop her anymore."

"Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say this, because it's not like I'm losing enough sleep over this already," Rayna only half-joked.

"Maybe you and Deacon should have thought twice about that last birthday gift," Watty teased.

Rayna winced. "Uh."

"Speaking of gifts," Watty said as he grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair. He pulled a little wrapped-up box out of the pocket. "This is for you." He handed it to her.

"Deacon and I said no gifts," Rayna playfully scolded him.

"This isn't a gift exactly. This is something I've been meaning to give you for a while. Those are old photos I thought you would like to have."

Rayna smiled when she understood. "Oh. Thanks," she stressed. There was a pause, and the atmosphere got heavy all of a sudden. On days like these, Rayna often thought about Virginia.

One of the things that pained her the most was that her mom had never got to meet her family. She'd never got to know Deacon, she'd never got to see her amazing granddaughters grow up. Rayna remembered when she, Tandy and Virginia used to go to the Jaymes property and they would sit on a blanket near the water and just sing and dream about the future. So many of Rayna's dreams had come true. She wished she could have shared them with her mom.

"What hurts every time I celebrate a milestone like this is that Mom isn't there to see it."

Watty got choked up for a second. "Virginia would have been so proud of the woman you've become, Rayna."

She smiled, tears building. "Thanks, Dad."

—

TBC