So this is backtracking a little bit but I wondered….what if she'd gone after Deacon after he put that ring in her hand and walked out of the kitchen at the end of s2 ? How could it have changed the course of the current season? Some events will probably be minorly the same, but how they happen and their after-effects will be altered.

He looks so happy to see her as he stands in the middle of the melee like he's directing traffic. This is his element. Organized chaos. The bigger the better. Luke Wheeler might as well have invented the phrase "go big or go home."

Rayna watches as caterers unload a five tier wedding cake, and a groom's cake with Luke's face on it.

Really, she thinks silently, How on earth did this get so out of hand? This isn't a wedding. It's a damn circus.

There is no turning back now. Some higher power has made the decision for her, as if it knows what she's been trying to deny all along.

He notices her slowly making her way up the path then, and walks towards her, a confident, happy stride to his step.

"Babe, what are you doing here? I'm not supposed to see you before the wedding, it's bad luck," he says, leaning in to kiss her.

But she flinches before their lips make a connection.

His brow furrows. "What? Whatsa matter? You got that look on your face like someone died or somethin'. Everything alright?"

Rayna's face wavers as she takes both of Luke's hands in hers. "Listen, I've been going over and over this in my head, Luke, and I….I've made an awful mistake." It took every bit of courage she could find to say those words. "Luke, I can't marry you."

The hands that had been holding hers abruptly are yanked away and he takes a hard step back.

"Is this a goddamn joke?"

Tears blur her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Luke, and I pray some day you'll understand how much this hurts me too."

His eyes grow huge, and a vein in his neck looks like it will bust any second. "Understand! What the hell is there to understand? You tell me, Rayna. What is there to understand?"

She has rehearsed most of this speech all the way here. Except for the last little part. She hasn't been able to make herself say that part out loud yet. Saying it out loud will make it real. Again.

She's been here before.

"I keep making the same mistakes, Luke," she says quietly. "And continuing this same cycle, and I need to break it once and for all."

Luke walks a few steps away from her, and put his boot directly through a stack of neatly lined up white folding chairs. "You couldn't have figured this out a little earlier?" he shouts, his voice growing louder and angrier with each word. Set-up workers were starting to turn around to check out the commotion. "I got five hundred people showing up here in a matter of hours. 18 kegs of beer, 600 pounds of shrimp and steak, and a reporter for People Magazine. How the hell am I supposed to undo all this?"

"I'm so sorry," she says again, her bottom lip trembling. "And it's not you. It's me, Luke. It's the person I've always been, the life I've always had. And this isn't it. You know I care about you, but this…all this, it isn't me."

His expression melts a little, and he looks more hurt than angry. "Rayna don't do this," he said with a hitch in his voice. "I love you. I don't get it. Why would you do this?"

"I can't do to you what I did to Teddy," Rayna says quietly. "I can't make you a casualty of my life."

"I'm not Teddy! This ain't some shotgun wedding to keep everyone from knowing the father of your child is a drunk asshole."

She winces at the slur on Deacon's character, and takes a breath.

"Or him. I can't do it to him again either."

"You mean Deacon," Luke says, gritting his teeth, his eyes flashing with blue fire. "Is that it? This is all about Deacon, isn't it? It always goes back to you and Deacon."

Rayna closed her eyes and a tear fell. "Luke, you're not hearing what I'm telling you. I can't marry you because….

Luke's eyes darken, and the truth she's trying to tell him, the humiliating truth, the words she's not saying slam into him like an 18 wheeler sliding sideways across the highway. Again, she'd said. I can't do this AGAIN.

"Oh my god," he whispered, his voice low and laced with fury. "Don't even say it," he says. "Don't you dare even say it, Rayna."

But she needs to say it out loud. It's the only way to make it real.

Rayna takes a deep breath and speaks the words that will change everything.

####################################

Three Months Earlier….

Rayna stood in the middle of her kitchen with that ring crushed tightly in her fist.

She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to spill over as his words echoed over and over again, his kiss still fresh on her lips, her face still warm where his hand had touched her cheek. You and me, Ray. That's how it's supposed to be.

Time froze and the rest of the world turned hazy as she listened to the echo of Deacon's footsteps get farther away as he stepped around her and towards the door. She heard it click gently, firmly behind him.

"Wait," she wanted to say. But it was too late.

She didn't know how her feet moved, but her heart was winning over her logic, and before she knew it, she was moving towards that door, swiping her keys off the counter. Walking quickly, faster, running.

It was merely a minute since he'd walked away, but the seconds felt like hours.

When she threw opened the front door, she dreaded to look, afraid she'd see nothing but the red glow of his taillights going down her driveway. Afraid she'd have to go after him, even though every fiber of her logical being was screaming that it was wrong. She'd let Luke put a ring on her finger tonight in front of 70,000 people, made a promise to spend the rest of her life with him.

No matter what she felt for Deacon, what she'd always feel, it was too late. She needed to make him understand that.

Rayna didn't have to worry about chasing him down, though. He was there. Leaning against his truck in the moonlight, head down, hands in his pockets. Waiting. He knew her too well.

He looked up when he heard her boots crunching on the gravel. Didn't look surprised at all.

"You don't get to do that," she said, almost angry. "Just say all those things and walk away like that. Just kiss me like…like none of it even mattered! All the secrets and lies, and the years of pain we caused each other….I can't do this with you again."

"Didn't say anything I didn't mean," he said simply.

She knows this, because Deacon never says anything he doesn't mean.

The tears she'd been forcing away spilled over, and she could swear she could feel her heart being ripped in two. "You can't ask me to do that, Deacon. Choose between the two of you. Luke is a good man, and I'll have a good life with him. But you…you're Maddie's father. We'll always be in each other's lives. That's the way it has to be."

Deacon's blue eyes stared her down intensely. Knowing.

"You'll never marry Luke," he said quietly.

All the anger and frustration drained out of Rayna's face, and deep down, somehow she knew he was right, though it would be a long while, months, before she will admit it to herself. He knews her, sometimes better than she knew herself. He always had. "You don't know that," she said haltingly.

"Yes," he said, his voice soft. "I do. If you were gonna marry Luke, you wouldn't be standing here with me. You would have let me leave and never walked out that door. You can say a lot of things, but…you can't say you don't love me, Ray. That's the one thing I'll never believe."

Rayna couldn't find the words to speak, but he reached out for her, pulled her in close, and somehow it happened again that she was in his arms again, and they melted into each other like they always had, like they were two halves of the same soul pulled back together.

"You should go," she said a few long minutes later, abruptly pulling away from his comforting hug, rubbing her arms where they are suddenly cold in the early fall night air. She doesn't like the way he makes her feel, like all her common sense has gone out the window.

"Why?"

"Because," she whispered. Because I'm afraid of what will happen if I stand here in the dark one more second with you.

With a sigh, he nodded. "Guess you got a lot to think about. We both do."

So Deacon left her standing there in the dim courtyard light and climbed into the driver's seat of his truck. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to absorb everything that had happened in the last few hours, leaning his head against the steering wheel, closing his eyes, trying to settle down the fire burning in his chest.

He hadn't planned it this way. Hadn't planned it at all, really. But seeing Luke propose, seeing the hurt on Maddie's face… he had to do something. He couldn't let her marry the wrong guy again without telling her how he felt.

He was startled when he went to turn the key and suddenly the passenger door opened and Rayna resolutely climbed up in the cab without a second's hesitation. "What are you doing?"

"I think I've probably gone crazy," she said quietly, her eyes burning into his. "But take me with you."

A slow smile spread across his face. "Thought you wanted me to go."

"I don't want to think about anything," she said, her voice wavering. "Tonight I just want to be somewhere with you."

He reached for her hand, one fist still tightly clenching that silver band. And gently one by one he kissed her fingers and uncurled them. Slowly he slipped the seven karat diamond off her finger, dropped in the cupholder, and replaced it with the simple silver band.

And she let him.

"There," Deacon said, satisfied. "That's a hell of a lot better, ain't it?"

She physically hurt inside, staring down at that ring, thinking of everything attached to its meaning. All the years of pain, and secrets, and lies….all the years of love, too. It hadn't been all bad. And still it had survived.

The ring in the cupholder had no history yet, no scuffs or scratches, or stories. It was a beginning; clean, a fresh start, all she ever wanted.

They drove to his house, not speaking in the dim light of the truck cab, him holding her hand across the console. Rayna knew where they were going, didn't need to ask, wasn't surprised when he took her home, to the house that is his and used to be "theirs".

They didn't speak. They didn't need to, as she walked up the front porch steps in front of him. He is close behind her, his hand gentle in the small of her back, reaching to unlock the door and push it open.

That place, that man, is exactly what she needed right now, Rayna realized as he led her down the dark hallway to his room, his fingers still firmly tangled in hers. He wasn't letting go. It had been years since that place was theirs, but it was familiar, comforting. Somehow it silenced the internal battle that has been eating her up inside all night, since the moment she saw Luke get down on one knee, and beyond him, Deacon's pained expression as he stood in the front row near the stage.

"Ray…" Deacon's voice was low as he sat on the edge of the bed, both of her hands still tangled in his as she stood in front of him. Splinters of moonlight coming from the window behind them casted shadows on her face, and her eyes were pained. He hated to see her hurting. He always had. "You know, if I could go back….if I could do it all over again and change things…."

He would have given his life to take away every ounce of pain he'd ever caused her.

"Deacon," she whispered. "I think we're done talking."

He pulled her in, pulled her mouth against his, her body against his, back onto the bed that became theirs once again. And she let him, because in that moment, it was more right than anything she'd ever felt, and the rest of the world be damned.

The cool sheets against her skin, the familiar wool blanket. The pillow that smelled like his cologne, the guitar-calloused hands that worshipped her. They were all so familiar, and sweet, and so damn good that Rayna's soul cried silently inside. She wanted this, so bad, but the fear was there too. The fear that it wouldn't last, that there was too much water under the bridge and too many demons.

So they don't talk. They don't talk about rings, or regrets, or what the morning will bring. They just love.

And for now, in that moment, it is enough.

############################

Rayna wakes in Deacon's arms before the light of dawn, her common sense returning. Her guilt returning. Her fear overtaking it all. What was I thinking, she thinks, silently cursing herself and her lack of willpower when it came to him. I can't do this with him again. My god, what the hell have I done?

She'd let Luke put that ring on her finger, and promised the rest of her life to him….and then promptly proceeded to jump into bed with the one man she could never seem to say no to.

And still, as she looked over at Deacon sleeping next to her with a contented half smile on his face and his rumpled dark hair, it hurt to leave him. How easy it was to fall into old patterns, the way they'd always slept, with her on her right side, and him curled around her drawing her close.

Those old patterns were the very thing that scare her to death.

With her heart aching, she eased away from his warmth, and tiptoed around, gathering up strewn about articles of clothing, and slipped out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom, where she dressed quickly, and headed for the front door.

She reached for the door handle, but to her surprise it opened, and she finds herself face to face with Scarlett, herself returning in the early morning hours.

The embarrassment on both of their faces was evident, but there was an understanding as well between women who have done things they know they're going to regret later.

Scarlett ducked around her to go in, Rayna slipped around her to go out, and neither one of them looked back.

########################################

Deacon knew it before he opened his eyes. He could feel it. She was gone.

With a sigh, he reluctantly dragged his gaze to her side of the bed. Empty.

His eyes traveled to the nightstand. A folded piece of paper waited, and on top of it, the weight of a familiar silver band.

With a heavy heart he unfolded the piece of paper. He couldn't help but think of how many hits songs made up of their words he'd read in that familiar handwriting.

Deacon,

My only regret leaving here this morning is that I know it will hurt you. I love you. You know I will love you for the rest of my life, and we will always be a part of each other's lives, but I can't take the chance on us again. You are a good man, and you deserve someone who can love you without doubts. Forgive me. R

Deacon crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it aside.

Frustrated, angry, he stalked down the stairs. He stomped around the kitchen, making himself coffee, slamming cupboards and drawers, before he couldn't take it anymore, and walked out the kitchen door.

He sat in the backyard for a long time on the wooden swing, twirling that silver band between his fingers broodingly. Twice now, she'd given it back.

Two times was enough for him.

Angrily, he reared his arm back and threw it as hard as he could. It disappeared into the grass somewhere, but he didn't bother to watch where it landed. This time he wasn't getting it back.

###############################

Rayna had walked down the street far out of view of Deacon's house before she called for a cab.

By the time the sun was rising, she was back in her own bed, but she didn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, her dreams taunted her.

She pretended to sleep though, when she heard the click of the bedroom door, and Luke slipped into the bed next to her, and wraps his arms around her.

It is a different kind of comfort than the arms that held her all night. It is comforting for all the wrong reasons. Luke is safe, a clean slate, a promise of a new beginning without the demons of the past. He was every woman's dream.

She did love him, in a different way. Admired him, maybe, the way he never doubted himself, the way he went after exactly what he wanted with no hesitation. He had the world at his fingertips, and he wanted to share it with her and her girls.

"Mornin, babe," he pressed a kiss to her cheek.

"Hey," she said tiredly. "What are you doing here so early?"

"I promised pancakes, remember?"

She remembered now. The girls would be home in a few hours, and then Luke's kids would show up not much later. There would be wedding talk, and talk about their tours, their schedules, their future together as a family.

"I remember," she said, mustering up a little smile.

"Last night was something else, wasn't it?"

Tears burned her eyes, and she forced them away with every bit of strength she had. "Yeah," she whispers. "It sure was."

"You and me, Rayna," Luke said, picking up her hand to admire the 7 karat ring that was back on her finger. "What we got is damn near perfect. I guess timing really is everything."

"Yeah," she said with a soft sigh. "I guess it is."