“Get another necklace, Daddy!” was his response, making Vince smile even more through the tears building in his eyes.
“Yeah, he’s right there” came Kyle’s voice from outside Xander’s stall. Vince looked up to see him leaning on the stall door, pointing at him and Dustin.
Vince patted Dustin’s thigh, got up, and dusted the shavings off his pants as he went to the stall door. Dustin followed, doing the same. Perhaps sitting in a horse stall wasn’t the tidiest thing to do.
“Okay,” Jason declared when Vince got to the door, “you get the award for the greatest save in show jumping history. That was incredible.”
Vince smiled. “It was more Xander than me, but thank you.”
“How did that not even faze you?” Kyle asked. By his expression, Vince had a good feeling he was a little impressed or amazed.
Vince patted Xander when he took interest in his visitors and came to greet them. “I ride bareback a lot at home,” he explained with a shrug. “Jumping too. I can’t say I’ve jumped something that big without a saddle, but it definitely trained me to keep my leg in the right spot when we do jump. And Xander knows his job really well. Any other horse might have taken the jump out or refused it with a random change in something like that, but he trusts me and knows what we do together.”
“Still,” Jason commented, “that had me go from praying for you to clear the final one, to dreading and praying harder, to screaming my head off.”
Kyle rubbed his ear with a grimace. “Yeah, I might still have damage to my eardrum from sitting next to him. But trust me, all of us reacted the same way. The whole section of the stands we were in, at least.”
“I have a feeling Brazil wanted the rail down,” Jason added quietly. He rubbed Xander’s nose and smiled at them.
“We did get lucky hitting the rail, though,” Vince admitted. “It probably should have come down.”
“Oh, I saw the slow motion,” Kyle told him. “He knocked it with one hoof, then immediately pushed it back down into the cups with the other hoof. It was incredible.”
“Call it luck, call it physics,” Jason said with a shrug. “I call it a gold medal.”
Vince chuckled. “That’s what I call it too.”
“One more to go,” Dustin commented, nudging Vince playfully.
“Maybe,” Vince replied. “You never know what could happen.”
“We’ll be cheering you on then too,” Jason assured him. “Gotta see you guys kick more ass. Bet you can.”
Vince chuckled and shook his head. “We’ve already gotten one medal more than I had ever expected to get in my lifetime.”
“And congrats on that for sure,” Jason replied.
“Yeah, I never said that, did I?” Kyle said. “Congrats.”
Vince smiled again. “Thank you. Both of you. We’ll do our best in the next final round, but we’ll see. Anything could happen.”
“But anything could happen to the other guys too,” Jason reminded him. “You got this.”
Vince hoped so. But, he reminded himself, win or lose in the individual round, he had still accomplished something great in his career. He’d won an Olympic medal. And not just any medal. They’d actually won a gold one by some incredible miracle.
Vince once again felt himself reaching for his mom’s wedding ring around his neck.
Chapter Fifteen
VINCE SPENT some time riding Xander the next day. There was no competition, so he took Xander into the training arena and tested the new stirrup leathers. He quickly decided they would take a lot of wear to be close to the same length as his old ones. They would either be slightly too long or slightly too short. He went with slightly too short and gave himself time to adjust to the difference.
Other than that, he kept his word and relaxed for the rest of the day with Dustin in the semiprivate space of Dustin’s room, their little getaway place.
They spent some of that time making love, and then they lay wrapped up in each other while they got back to the things outside their private sanctuary they needed to attend to. Vince answered the emails from the night before, mostly from writers wanting their interviews. He answered the questions he was emailed and told the writers who wanted phone interviews to wait until after the individual competition so they could all kill two birds with one stone. Dustin, meanwhile, answered questions on his blog and Vince’s public social media. They talked the whole time about what people were saying, how they could respond, and how they couldn’t wait to be back in their own house—or at least in a room they could share at night. Even if reality was intruding somewhat on their time together, Vince was still happy to lie with Dustin, talking, touching, and kissing even as they worked. It was comfortable and domestic, and it was what he looked forward to having for the rest of his life.
Eventually they shut out reality for a few more moments of peace, until Dustin’s phone buzzed with a text.
“My roommates want to know if it’s ‘safe’ to come back,” Dustin said, making air quotes with one hand.
Vince checked the time on his phone and finally understood why he was so hungry. “Are they bringing dinner?”
“I don’t think meal vouchers cover other people,” Dustin replied. “I told them to give us fifteen minutes.” He then proceeded to stretch and sit up.
Vince did the same, then gathered the rest of his clothes to get dressed again. Before they even finished dressing, he pulled Dustin into a tight hug.
“I love you,” he murmured, then kissed Dustin lightly.
Dustin returned the kiss with a soft one of his own. “I love you too.”
VINCE DECIDED to hold on to the thought of having already won a medal to keep himself positive for the individual final. He was tied at the top at the standings with two other riders, but all pairs came into the final on a clean slate. He was also competing against two of his own teammates.
“Two rounds,” Greg explained to him, Mary, and Nick before they walked the course. “Top twenty move on to the second round, including everyone tied for that twentieth spot by faults. Both rounds combine for an overall score. The course will be tough, and the time will be tight.”
Vince didn’t think the first-round course looked any worse than the team final course had, and the time was more forgiving. He was proven pretty accurate when several of the lower-ranked pairs managed to make it around the course without taking down more than one rail. Those who did have more trouble, though, had a lot of it. He heard of as many as four rails going down for three different pairs, which was quite a lot at this level of competition. Vince had a feeling the course designers were trying to rule out pairs who had maybe only made it because their nations didn’t have a full team qualified for the equestrian competitions. Whether that was fair or not, Vince decided he wasn’t going to think about it.
So Vince was not at all nervous when he and Xander entered the arena. The crowd wasn’t as silent as it was during his last ride, but that was fine with him. Xander loved showing off, and he jumped better when the crowd cheered. By halfway through, Vince was so focused on the course and Xander’s performance that he had forgot his stirrups felt too short. Xander didn’t even feel like he was tired after so many days of intense competition either.
They finished the round with no rails down and within the time. He knew that put them in a good spot, but with the first course being so forgiving, if ridden correctly, he wasn’t sure where they truly stood among the competition. Of course he wanted to go clear, but who else would also do it? Mary and Nick had gotten zero faults with their horses as well.
It soon became obvious not many pairs would be perfect in both rounds. The second was more difficult than the team final round, at least in Vince’s opinion. It was almost halfway through the round before a pair went clear, but they had taken down a rail in the first round and put a foot in the water jump, meaning they still could finish on no better than eight faults.
Vince cringed when Nick’s horse attempted to jump through one jum
p instead of over it, taking the entire structure out. They finished the rest of the course just fine, but Nick was shaking his head when they exited the arena.
“Had a little spook at something there,” Nick muttered. “Not sure what it was. Probably a ghost.”
Mary and Tex also took out a rail, but in a slightly less dramatic way. They simply knocked it off the top instead of jumping through it.
The real pressure came when the first double clear came in. And it came in for the anchor pair on the Brazilian team.
“He hasn’t had a single fault this entire competition,” Dustin muttered in the warm-up ring. He patted Xander and told him, “You just have to go clear, buddy.”
Vince looked down at Dustin and nodded. “We’ll have to do our best, that’s for sure.”
Dustin patted his leg. “You got this round too. Go clear and force a jump-off to decide the winner.”
The next pair took out two jumps, and then it was time for Vince and Xander to enter the arena. Dustin gave them each another pat, Vince on the leg and Xander on the rump, and then they trotted through the gate.
Going clear would be easier said than done. The first jump was smooth enough to start each pair off right, and then things got tricky. They had to turn sharply to the next fence, then cross the entire arena to get to the following one. Vince once more tapped into Xander’s natural speed to keep them under the time allowed.
They were into the final three fences when Vince misjudged a distance and asked Xander to jump a fraction of a second too soon. Xander’s back hooves took out the top rail, sending it clattering to the ground and causing the crowd to groan.
Vince didn’t let it into his head. He guided Xander through the final two fences, accurately this time, and they crossed the finish marker without taking any more down. He patted Xander as they left the arena, even though he was kicking himself mentally. Xander wasn’t tired, but clearly Vince’s mind was.
Dustin still smiled as he took Xander’s reins and Vince dismounted. “Not bad for how tricky the course was.”
“I guess only taking one rail down in technically five rounds of competition isn’t bad,” Vince agreed. He patted Xander once more on the neck as they walked to the vet area for the mandatory check.
“You should have silver,” Greg told him. “The current pair already had four faults from the first round, and they started this round with another down. The final pair might be an issue, but only if they go clear. They’re on four faults from the first round as well.”
“Really?” Vince asked. He hadn’t even thought about anything but going clear. The thought of any other medals hadn’t occurred to him quite yet.
Dustin waved him off. “Go watch. I’ve got Xander.”
Vince thanked him and followed Greg to the arena. Sure enough, the pair that came in after Vince took down a rail to increase their two-round score to eight. The final pair, the other Brazilian rider who could possibly tie Vince and force a jump-off for second place, had Vince worried as they cleared jump after jump.
“But they’re going too slow,” Vince finally realized. “They aren’t going to make the time.”
“I guess they decided third place was fine if they didn’t have a rail,” Greg replied. “Interesting.”
And, as Vince expected, they ended with all the rails up but over the time.
“Holy shit,” Vince declared.
Greg laughed and guided him back to where Dustin and Xander were waiting. Xander was grazing under Dustin’s watchful gaze, and Mary and Nick were talking to Dustin.
Vince hooked his arm around Dustin’s shoulder and asked, “Does silver seem like a good color for a winning necklace?”
Dustin laughed. “Yes, I’m sure Hunter will want to see both of them now.” He hugged Vince with one arm. “I had a good feeling about today.” Vince smiled at him. “And it really was a good day.”
THE PRESENTATION ceremony was much the same as the previous one, but with fewer people and horses in the arena. And Vince stood respectfully for the national anthem of Brazil instead of his own. Both of the other riders seemed friendly about the results, just as they had in the team final. They took their pictures, did their victory gallop, and Vince called home. Hunter seemed perfectly okay with him getting second place because “you still stood on the winner stool.” Everyone else congratulated him once again, and then he finally got to responding to the writers who needed his interviews.
Being a professional athlete involved a lot more self-promotion than he ever expected.
Chapter Sixteen
TWO DAYS later was the closing ceremony. Greg kept his strings pulled, and Dustin was once again able to participate with Vince as part of the team staff. Jason and Kyle were also with them. Vince felt a bittersweet pang knowing the ceremony signaled the end of this adventure. He’d done something his mom always dreamed of him being able to do. He’d done what she always hoped he would. He’d won not only one medal for her, but two. He’d accomplished his only major career goal in his life.
Now it would be on to something much different. As excited as he was to finally get home to work on that and to be able to share living space with Dustin again, it was still bittersweet going through the transition between those two stages. Weirdly he found himself feeling emotional about that, and Dustin noticed. He gripped Vince’s hand repeatedly and talked to him about everything around them.
He also seemed to employ Jason and Kyle’s help to keep Vince distracted from his unexpected feelings. Jason made a point to whisper comments about all the performances they watched in the arena before them. Kyle bitched about the rain and how they couldn’t be in a covered arena, but at least the rain had held off for the equestrian competitions. Dustin held his hand. By the end he allowed them to drag him dancing, but he spent most of his time laughing at how ridiculous Jason could be.
When he said goodbye to Dustin that night, it was with a quick kiss and the words “One last time.” Then Jason dragged him away.
The next day was spent packing and making sure they had everything. Vince cleared out his room and double-checked every drawer in the dresser and every nook and cranny of the entire space. Then after saying goodbye to Jason and Kyle, who were both about to board a plane back home, he lugged his bags to the barns.
Everything got sorted at the barn just as thoroughly. Vince allowed Mary’s groom to pass off all the information he would need to fly with Tex. Then they waited for the transport convoy. When it arrived, they loaded the horses, stored the equipment, and climbed into their own vehicles.
At the airport, the horses were loaded into their flying stalls and allowed to acclimate for a few hours before they were loaded onto the plane. Xander was stalled next to Tex, which made Vince’s job easier, just as it was flying with Danny to Rio. Not for the first time, Vince wondered how Luke had done on the flight back home since he hated flying so much. Vince would have to ask Jason about that.
The flight passed as uneventfully as the first, and they landed early in the morning in Florida. Vince texted Mary as soon as they got the horses settled in their quarantine stalls and the vet did his check. She came a little over an hour later, and they climbed into her SUV.
“Thanks for the ride,” Vince said with a yawn. “And the room.”
She waved him off. “Not a problem. You did earn me a gold medal, after all. Sorry I missed the after-party ceremony, but I just wanted to get home.”
“Didn’t miss much,” Vince assured her. “And Tex flew great.”
“Always does,” she said proudly. “I’ll go visit tomorrow. I know you guys are exhausted.”
Vince glanced back at Dustin, who had taken the back seat without a word. He was stretched out, already sleeping.
“That’s very accurate,” Vince stated, yawning again.
When they got to Mary’s stable, they dragged themselves and their bags to the guesthouse and slept a few hours before they finally made themselves get up so they could sleep that night.
“What are we going to do for the week Xander’s in quarantine?” Dustin asked as he pushed the start button on the coffee maker.
Vince shrugged from where he was leaning against the counter. “Visit him. Finalize the wedding stuff. Help Mary out around the stable. Work on my student waiting list. And did I tell you we have a photo shoot sometime after we get home?”
“We?” Dustin repeated, leaning next to him.
Vince nodded. “Not for the equestrian news. They have plenty of shots from the competition. One of my other writer followers wants to do a full article. They’re doing them for all the openly GLBT athletes who won medals.”
“How many are there?” Dustin asked, giving him a curious look.
Vince thought for a moment. “Me, Jason, and like three others, I believe. I don’t remember who or what sports.”
Dustin nodded. “And I need to be in it?”
“Well, I thought it would be a good idea,” Vince answered. “Do you not want to?”
“I do,” Dustin assured him. “I was just thinking maybe I’m ready to tell my story too, if you’re okay with that. I don’t want to steal the spotlight, though.”
“You won’t,” Vince replied. “I would love you to tell your side of the story. You’re important. You can send a very positive message too.”
“I hope so,” Dustin declared. “I want to do something to encourage people if I can.”
Vince hooked an arm around him. “That’s a great idea. I’ll help you.”
Dustin kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”
“I think I might also talk about being asexual,” Vince said after a moment.
“Yeah?” Dustin asked, looking over at him.
Vince nodded. “Talking to Kyle about his issues with his sexuality made me think maybe I could help other people. There are plenty of other people out there who would be role models for young gay people, but you never hear about asexuality.”
“There’s a lot online if you look hard enough,” Dustin pointed out.
By Heart Page 10
