"Where have you been, young lady?"

Rayna felt her heart seem to stop and her mouth go dry as she turned to face Lamar, standing at the door of his study. "Daddy," she said, swallowing hard. "I thought you were out of town."

"Got home early." He nodded at the guitar case she had in her hand. "Where have you been?" he asked again. "With that?"

She took a deep breath. "Studying." Not totally true, but not totally incorrect either. "And this was in the car so I thought I'd bring it in." She set the case down and squared her stance. "I'd really like to take guitar lessons, though. I'm not very good."

"You don't need guitar lessons. I don't know why your mother even bought you that. Piano is much more appropriate."

She frowned. "But I want to learn to play. I want to write songs and perform and I need a guitar."

He took a few steps towards her. "I've already told you, Rayna, that those are foolish dreams, put in your head by your mother, who had no business encouraging that."

"But I want to be an artist, Daddy," she said stubbornly.

He smiled, but it was a cold unfeeling smile. "Not while you live in this house, Rayna. That is not acceptable. And you'll do well to remember that as long as you live in my house, you follow my rules." His voice was low and deceptively calm. She knew better than to underestimate him. But she was stubborn and she had learned, over the past four years, to stand her ground with him.

She lifted her chin and stared back at him, without flinching. "What about my dreams? What I want to do with my life? Why are you so dead set against me doing this?"

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. "It's not appropriate for someone of your background, Rayna. I can't allow you to go out and play in a…honky tonk, in front of riff raff, for tips. It's beneath you."

"But what if want to do that? And what if, one day, I'm on a big stage, in front of thousands of people, selling millions of records? Doing what I love?"

He scowled and shook his head. "No. Don't cross me, girl. You'll regret it if you do."

She stared back at him defiantly. "Then I guess one day I'll regret it," she said, more calmly than she felt. She turned and headed for the stairs.

"Don't you defy me, Rayna!" her father called after her. "Don't test me!"

She kept walking up the stairs and then down the hall to her room. When she got there, she closed the door and dropped her guitar case on the floor and started shaking. It wasn't really that she was afraid to keep trying to reach her dream, but she had no idea what her father might do and she wasn't really prepared for that.

She met Deacon the next week at the same park. When she walked up to him, she said, "How do I get in touch with you if I need to? Like, if something comes up and I can't make it, or it rains, or something? Do you have a phone?"

He nodded. "I do, but I ain't always there."

She set her guitar case on the bench seat and opened it, lifting out her guitar. She looked back at him. "Would your sister take a message?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. She can be kinda moody."

She got up on the table and sat next to him. "She doesn't like me much, does she? Or maybe it's just that she really likes your girlfriend." She smiled a little, although it still made her heart hurt to think he had a girlfriend.

He smiled and shook his head. "She don't really like her. But it gives her a chance to bug me. She does like to do that."

She smiled. "Well, if you'll write it down for me anyway, I can try." She pulled a piece of paper out of her backpack and handed it to him with a pen. She watched as he wrote down his name and the number and gave them back to her. His fingers brushed against hers when he did and he looked up at her. She felt her breath catch in her throat. "Thanks," she whispered. He had a look in his eyes that she couldn't decipher, a wistfulness almost. She wondered what it meant.

He cleared his throat and looked down at the ground. "So, um, did you practice at all since last time?" he asked.

"Yes, of course I did. But I don't think it sounded the same way as it did when I was here."

He looked at her for a moment. "Maybe we tried too much at once. Maybe we just do one or two."

####

One thing he noticed about her right away was that she got mad quick. She did then. "Are you saying you don't think I can do this? Or remember things? That I'm stupid?" She was frowning and her jaw was set.

He shook his head vigorously. "No, no, I ain't saying that at all," he said. "None of that. I'm saying maybe we did too much. It's a lot, when you don't know how to play."

Her eyes flashed with anger. "I do know how to play. Maybe you're just a bad teacher."

He scowled at her. "I told you I ain't no teacher at all. You were the one who wanted to do this." He sucked in his breath. "You ever thought it's just you ain't that good?"

Her eyes flew wide open and she gasped. "Are you saying I can't play the guitar?" she cried.

"I'm saying you ain't the best at it." She looked so hurt then, he closed his eyes and bit down on his lip. He hadn't meant to say that and hurt her feelings. He liked her. A lot. He liked her spunk and her drive. And she was so pretty. He opened his eyes to look at her and he could see her looking away, chewing her lip, like she was trying to keep from crying. He reached out and touched her arm. "Rayna…."

She swung her head back to look at him and, instead of tears, he saw determination. "You're right. I'm not very good. I probably will never be very good. But I need to know how to do at least a passable amount so I can write songs. And accompany myself. You still may not be the best teacher, but you are a really, really good guitar player. If I can learn even a little bit from you, it'll be better than nothing."

He had to smile. She was so determined and he liked that about her. "How many songs you wrote?"

Her face turned pink. "Just two. The two I sang at the Bluebird." She bit her lip. "How many have you written?"

He shrugged. "Maybe thirty, thirty-five."

She looked surprised. "Really?"

"I like to write." He smiled a little. "Ain't all necessarily good, but I got stuff to say, so I say it."

"Do you want to be a songwriter?"

"You mean like just a songwriter?" She nodded. "Nah," he said, shaking his head. "I wanna be on stage, same as you. I wanna headline a tour, make something of myself. Show people I can do it."

"Your girlfriend?"

He shook his head. "Not her." He sighed. "This means everything to me. Like it does you. That's why I came here, to be an artist. To get a record deal, be on the radio, be on stage. A big stage, not a honky tonk or a bar or something. And write my own songs. I don't wanna sing nobody else's songs."

"How do you know what to write about?"

"I write about my truth. Three chords and the truth, that's what they say. You just gotta write what's in your heart or on your mind. Sometimes it's therapy to write it out."

She frowned. "Do you do that a lot? Write as therapy?"

He nodded. "I do." He inclined his head towards her. "You seem like you have a nice life. Private school, right? So you're rich?"

She set her jaw again and he couldn't help but smile at her earnestness and backbone. "I don't know why you assume I'm rich. And what that has to do with writing as therapy."

He laughed softly. "Hey, I don't mean to assume nothing. But think about it. Private school, convertible car, nice clothes. Means a nice life. Maybe you don't have things to write about like that."

"You don't know anything about me, Deacon Claybourne!" she cried.

"Then why don't you tell me?" He set aside his guitar and sat back.

She looked away for a moment, then back at him. "My mom was the one who got me interested in music. Especially country music. When I'd come home from school, we'd listen to the radio or these mix tapes she had, with all her favorite artists. We'd sing together and I just knew that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life." She patted her guitar. "She was the one who gave me this, because she supported me and encouraged me. I'm doing this for her."

He frowned a little. "You need to do it for you, Rayna." He thought he saw the hint of tears in her eyes.

"I am doing it for me, because it's my dream, but it was her dream for me too. Before she died." Now he understood and his heart ached for the obvious sorrow she was feeling. He could see it in her face – the loneliness, the wistfulness, the sadness. "She died when I was twelve." She looked at him then. "I've felt pretty alone since then. Doing this kind of helps me feel close to her."

He breathed in. "But you still got your dad, right?"

She nodded. "And my sister. But my father doesn't want me doing this. In fact, he gets angry every time he sees my guitar or hears me listening to country music. I don't understand that. I don't understand why he's so angry with me for wanting it. He's just always so angry, you know? I feel like I'm just, I don't know, wandering around that big old house all by myself."

He smiled a little. "See, I knew you were rich."

She looked at him for a moment, then smiled and swatted his arm. "I'm not rich. My father is, but I'm not." She sighed and the smile faded from her face. "I hate that life, Deacon. Everything about it is so fake, so pretentious, you know? I feel like I don't belong there." Some kids ran by and she watched them, before looking back at him. "I think my mom felt the same way. Even though she was born into that, she always seemed like she wished she was somewhere else, like she wasn't completely happy. I think that's why she gave me the guitar, so I'd follow my dreams instead of just doing what I was supposed to do because of where I was born." She shrugged. "You probably didn't have to worry about all that, if you've written all those songs. You had a nice, normal life with no one having these crazy expectations of you."

If only she knew. He shook his head. "I didn't have no normal life, Rayna. My mom died too, not when I was young as you, but that's why me and Beverly came here. She was gone and there wasn't no reason to stay in Mississippi."

"Where do your songs come from? What's your truth?" She looked curious.

He smiled a little. "Life in a small town. Tough times. Being afraid."

She looked skeptical. "I can't imagine you being afraid of anything. You seem pretty tough to me."

He shook his head. "You never know about people's lives, Rayna Jaymes. Sometimes they ain't what they seem."

She bit her lip. "My last name's not really Jaymes, you know."

"No, I didn't know."

"My father is kind of well-known in Nashville and I didn't want people knowing who I was. Jaymes was my mom's last name."

He smiled at her. "Rayna's kinda unique."

She blushed. "I guess it is, now that you say it." She glanced at his guitar. "Will you play me one of your songs?"

"Sure." He thought about what to play, finally choosing something that wasn't autobiographical but spoke to his feelings of not being able, or wanting to, go back home.

Papa writes to Johnny / But Johnny can't come home / Been too much time now / Too many nights on the road / Oh, too many nights on the road

Blues on the table / There's blues every week / Pouring out of the coffee pot / With the first cup of the day / Oh, the first cup of the day

Now where are my friends / When I'm taking the heat / Only help I got today / Was from a stranger on the street / Oh, a stranger on the street….

She had layers to her he hadn't expected. She was a rich girl – well, truthfully, she came from a rich family – but she didn't really act like it. She had good manners and talked educated, but she was down-to-earth. He'd thought she wouldn't have had much life experience, but when she'd told him about losing her mom, he'd realized there was a lot more there than she probably realized herself. Before she left, he'd asked her if she'd tried picking up a gig anywhere else and she said she had not. So he asked for the piece of paper back where he'd written his phone number and added several places he knew she could go and ask for an hour on a stage. She wouldn't get paid, but she'd get some experience playing in front of people for more than just a couple songs, and she'd get some tips.

That's when he'd realized they hadn't spent any time on the guitar. If you come back next week, I promise we'll do some chord work. She had smiled, that pretty smile that captured his heart, and told him that would be fine. And she said she'd work on some lyrics too, to bring to him. He really wanted to share with her the song he'd written for her. He'd finished it up and laid down the melody and every time he played it for himself, it made him think of her.

She felt like home to him, not that he thought he was good enough to be home for her, but he somehow just knew she'd be someone a man could love who would love him back just as fiercely and completely. Someone to make a home with, raise up a family with. Two arms around me / heaven to ground me / and a family that always calls me home….

####

She was sitting at her desk, finishing her homework. But then she started daydreaming, about what it would be like to be on stage, singing for big crowds. She thought back to the night Tandy had taken her to see her idols, The Judds. It had been a night when Lamar had been out of town or he would probably not have allowed it. But sitting in the arena, with all the other fans, watching them sing, made her want it so bad she could taste it.

She thought about what Deacon had said to her about songwriting and telling her truth. The thing was, she didn't feel like she had lived much of a life. When she heard songs on the radio or on her CD player, those songs seemed so much more…something. They made her cry or made her smile or made her feel some complex emotion. Even the song Deacon had played for her had given her a lump in her throat. Thinking about a young man – maybe Deacon – going out on the road, trying to make it on his own, with no one there to help him, no one to go home to, had evoked a picture in her head.

She thought about what her teacher had said, that her poems were like song lyrics. She reached for the notebook where she kept all of that. It had always been her way of writing down how she felt, the loneliness, the awkwardness, the feelings of not fitting in. She had never considered them the same as song lyrics, but she thought she could maybe show them to Deacon the next time she saw him and see what he thought.

She pulled out the sheet of paper where he'd written down his number, along with a number of places she could check out to see if they'd let her perform. Maybe he's right. Maybe Mr. White is right. Maybe I do need to try to perform wherever I can. Surely someday someone will pay me and then maybe Mr. White will help me get that record deal. She folded up the piece of paper and got up to tuck it into her purse. Then she sat back down at her desk with the notebook.

She found something she'd written sometime before the end of her freshman year. She'd always felt like such an oddball. She was the only person she knew whose mom had died. She was the only one who liked country music. She liked poetry and the symphony, not things most other kids her age did. Deacon had called her rich – but rich kids could be mean too, even to other rich kids. She smoothed her hand over the page in front of her.

You take a deep breath / And you walk through the doors / It's the morning of your very first day / You say hi to your friends you ain't seen in a while / Try and stay out of everybody's way

It's your freshman year / And you're gonna be here for the next four years / In this town / Hoping one of those senior boys / Will wink at you and say, "you know I haven't seen you around, before"….

####

Deacon walked into the bar where Samantha worked and hopped up on a stool. The bartender knew him there, and knew he was underage, but set a glass with two fingers of whiskey in front of him within seconds of his arrival. Deacon raised the glass in a salute of thanks and downed it in one swallow. The bartender poured him another. He felt a hand slide over his shoulder.

"Hey, lover," came a purr right at his ear.

He turned to see Samantha standing there, her purse draped over her shoulder. "You ready?" he asked. When she nodded, he knocked back the second glass of whiskey and slid off the barstool. He put his arm around Samantha and gave her a kiss. "Let's go then."

He took her hand and led her out the back door and to his truck. As soon as he had pulled out of the alley, she had given him a sexy smile and slid over on the bench seat, wrapping her arm around his neck and nibbling on his earlobe. He rubbed his hand on her leg, but as he was doing it all he could think about was Rayna. Even after they got to her apartment and she was spread-eagled underneath him, the face he saw was Rayna's.

He stayed long enough that it didn't seem like he was bolting, telling her he needed to get up early the next day. He got dressed quickly and hurried out to his truck. Then he sat there, his head on the steering wheel, wondering how he could disentangle himself from Samantha and whether Rayna Jaymes would even be interested in someone like him.