Page 53 of Run for the Money

Her cheeks are pink from the chill in the air, her hair is matted to her head with sweat, and there’s mud and horse manure caked on her boots, almost up to the knee. No one has ever been this beautiful.

“Luckiest man in the world.”

Epilogue

Seven Months Later

“They said ten o’clock, right?” I ask.

“Yep, on the dot,” Nick answers. “It’s only nine fifty-two.”

“And we submitted all my paperwork on time?”

Nick nods. “Two weeks early. Then I double-checked the documents with you every other day until the deadline.”

He says it patiently, but I’ve got to be driving him up the wall. This is probably the eightieth time today that I’ve asked him about my Olympic eligibility forms. Whoever decided they were due at midnight on December 31stis a jerk. I spent the countdown to the ball drop frantically reloading my email to make sure I hadn’t missed a last-minute request for more paperwork. Nick had to pluck my phone out of my hands and hide it in his pocket to get a proper New Year’s kiss.

Worse than the New Year’s Eve deadline, however, is the waiting period between paperwork submission and when the US Equestrian notifies athletes that we’re on the team. Back in January, they notified me I had met Olympic eligibility requirements, and invited me to participate in nationals in the spring—which I crushed. It’s July now, and I’ve been doing almost nothing but training and competing against my potential future teammates since then. I’ve got a solid record, but ultimately it’s not my call. In eight minutes, I find out if I’m flying halfway around the world to compete in the Olympic Games, or if I’ll be staying in Colorado to cope with vicious jealousy and disappointment.

US Equestrian builds the team based on skill, team compatibility, competitive edge, and probably some sort of alchemy or magic I’m currently too nervous to comprehend or form opinions about. They’re announcing the team today, and I don’t think I’ve stopped moving for about thirty-six hours. Every five minutes, I start to worry that I’ve made a tiny error somewhere that will disqualify me.

Nick has been calm and steady all seven months of Olympic purgatory. When I pace, he snags my hand and pulls me into an embrace that’s equal parts loving and straight-jacket-restrictive. Every time I launch into a list of all the potential clerical errors that could hurt my chances—such as being mistaken for a freakin’ horse—he pulls out his copies of the forms and shows me, line by line, that we filled them out correctly. At night, when I turn our bed into a trampoline park with all my tossing and turning, he pins my body underneath his and makes me come over and over, until I’m too tired to keep my eyes open.

He’s too calm, actually.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” I demand.

Nick catches my waist, interrupting my billionth circuit of the living room, and pulls me into his lap.

“Two reasons, in no particular order,” he says. “One, it’s physically impossible to freak out when you’re this nervous. There’s no nervous energy left for anyone else in a hundred-mile radius because you’re using it all.”

I roll my eyes, but deep down I’m grateful. If he were freaking out, too, there’s no telling what kind of a state I’d be in.

“Two,” he continues, “You’re on the team.”

I grab his cheeks between my hands and glare at him. “Your blind faith in me is very sweet, but ultimately has no bearing on the results.”

He grins, teeth out, crinkles in the corners of his eyes. “Baby, it’s not blind faith. It’s ten-oh-three. The results posted while you were wearing a hole in our living room carpet. You’re on the Olympic team.”

His grip on me keeps me from crumpling to the floor in my attempt to turn around so I can see his open laptop on the coffee table. It’s there, in black and white. I made the team.

“I’m going to the Olympics,” I whisper.

“Fuck yeah, you are,” Nick says proudly.

I scramble off his lap and turn around to face him.

“I’m going to the Olympics!” I shriek.

Bright golden excitement shoves all of that nervous energy out of my body and I take off running. Nick laughs as I gallop through the living room, screaming. This time when he intercepts me, he twirls me around the way he did after our first competition together, holding me tight against his chest.

The front door bangs open and Edwin charges in, looking terrified.

“What’s wrong? I heard screaming from all the way in the back stable,” he says, out of breath.

“She’s got Olympic zoomies,” Nick explains.

Possessed by the spirit of a flying squirrel, I push out of Nick’s arms to tackle Edwin, chanting, “Olympics! Olympics! Olympics!” as I go.

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