Chapter 18 Elise #2
The saddle had soft extra padding at the thighs, with a slightly deeper seat that would hold her more securely than a standard style. She noticed a curved, thick handle built into the front horn—not obvious, but practical and reassuring.
Straps along the side could fasten around her hips and thighs, keeping her secure without looking like she was being attached to the contraption.
Copper flicked an ear back toward her and snorted softly.
“Hey, handsome,” Elise murmured, reaching out to scratch his neck. “You’re in on this scheme, huh?”
“He’s been very patient,” Wade said with a smile, a hand on Copper’s halter. “We did a couple test runs so he wouldn’t freak. He’s good to go.”
She studied the space between her body and the saddle. She’d done transfers a thousand times—bed, chair, car, exam tables. This was the same process, just a little higher, a little scarier, and with a large, breathing animal attached.
But no one had to carry or hold her.
Fear nipped at the edges of her bravado. Before the accident, riding had been freedom. After, it had become…abject sadness. Until Nicole and Copper, she’d given up completely.
Since then, she’d gotten used to two people lifting her, someone pushing her, escorting her, babysitting her. Grateful as she was, it always felt like borrowing freedom instead of owning it.
She tightened her grip on the bar, set her jaw, and shifted her weight.
“Easy,” Wade murmured, his hands hovering near her waist, not touching unless she needed him. “Strong transfer, just like you do with your shower and bed. You can do this, Elise.”
He’d never seen her do any of those transfers, but the fact that he knew she did and respected the work involved meant a lot to her.
Taking a steadying inhale, she pivoted on her chair cushion, lifted with her arms and shoulders, slid across. For a breathless second, her center of gravity wobbled and the world tilted—but then the saddle caught her. Wade’s hand stayed close, but not on her.
In her next breath, she was seated, centered, and she’d done it alone!
Wade made a sound that was almost a laugh and a groan together. “You are incredible,” he said, his voice thick.
“Don’t you forget it,” she replied, but her eyes stung as she reached down to fasten the low-profile hip strap, securing herself to the saddle.
“That’s mostly for the unexpected,” he explained as he watched her work. “Spooks, little slips. You’ve got good core strength. I wanted something that gives you an extra second to grab a hold if needed.”
She glanced down. Her boots rested in the low stirrups more for appearance than function, but it felt…right, somehow. Her flowing burgundy skirt split easily but still covered everything. It would be even better in riding clothes. But the skirt made her feel pretty.
The lift platform lowered back to the floor with her empty chair in place. Copper shifted one step, and Elise’s body moved with him. She sucked in a breath. It was like a missing piece sliding into place.
She picked up the reins and gave a snap to Copper, who started to walk toward the stable doors.
Wade hustled ahead and opened them, clearing the way to the snow-covered ring. The air was cold but not brutal, her breath fogging in front of her. Copper’s hooves thudded softly on the packed ground.
She circled once at a walk, holding the reins, getting used to the feel of this new rig. The saddle held her firmly, but not rigidly. She felt secure and yet strangely…unbound.
Best of all, Wade was forty feet away. She was riding alone!
“This is amazing,” she said, the words escaping on a laugh. “I can’t even feel how the saddle is attached, just that I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s the idea,” Wade said, leaning against the very same railing where she’d first spotted him a few weeks ago.
The paddock fell quiet except for Copper’s breathing and the occasional swoosh of his tail. Snowflakes drifted lazily out of a sky the color of soft pewter.
Wade stayed where he was, so she walked the horse to the railing, stopping to look down at him from the saddle.
“Well,” she said, shifting the reins through her fingers. “You went big.”
He pushed up to perch on the top rail, just about eye to eye with her. “Can I tell you a story about my dog named Murphy?”
She blinked. “Your…dog?”
“Yeah.” He slipped a boot onto the lower rung of the rail. His hat shadowed his eyes, but she could see the nerves in the way he wrapped his bare hands around the wood of the top rail. “Can I tell it without you making fun of my ’bama accent? Because I may lean into it.”
“I never make fun of your accent,” she said, then ruined it by adding, “Not to your face.”
He huffed a laugh. “Fair. Okay.” He drew in a breath that looked like it hurt a little. “When I was fifteen, I had a dog I loved so much, an Irish setter named Murphy. He got bone cancer.”
She felt her lip go out in pity. “Sadness.”
“He started limping one day and they found it. And you know, the vet told my dad all the practical things. The cost of surgery, the rough recovery, the crappy odds. It made sense, on paper, to let him go.”
She let out a sympathetic whimper, rubbing her hands together but forgetting the cold.
“I remember I just sat on the kitchen floor with that dog’s head in my lap and realized that Murph didn’t know anything about money or odds or spreadsheets. He just knew how to be my best pal. But we were going to put him down to spare us the hard part. And I—I couldn’t live with that.”
“You weren’t an oncologist yet,” she said softly, rapt. “What did you do?”
“I put my little dial-up modem to work and went to war with every article, every printout, every late-night forum post about three-legged dogs. I told my parents if they said yes to the surgery, I’d handle the rest. The lifting, the icing, the meds, the ramp off the porch, since he couldn’t do stairs.
I begged them for a chance to fight for Murphy’s good days instead of just… folding in front of the bad ones.”
He waited a beat and smiled, holding her gaze, looking so sweet and smart and dear that if she could have climbed off this horse and kissed him, she would have. Instead, she just listened.
“They said yes. The surgery was ugly. Recovery was harder. But then one morning, he got up on three legs and looked at me like, ‘Well? You coming or what?’”
She laughed, picturing the sweet Irish setter and a teenaged Wade Reynolds.
“I built him ramps. I rigged this ridiculous homemade sling. He learned how to run again, just…differently. We got two years, three months, and two extra days of fun. They weren’t perfect. But they were good. They were his.”
She sighed, not entirely sure of the point, unless it was to make her fall harder for him. ’Cause that happened.
“That was the first time I really understood what I am,” he said.
“I’m not someone who fixes things because they’re broken.
I fix what’s between someone and the life they want, for as long as they get to have it.
I can’t always change the ending—that’s the curse of oncology. But I can change the middle.”
“And that’s what you wanted to do for me with all the…neuroscience and exoskeletons.”
He shook his head. “Forget all that, Elise. I just want you to not be blocked from living your best life. Not normal, not better, not up to anyone’s standards but yours. I swear.”
“And the ramp and this saddle?” She lifted the reins.
“One of the very first things you told me was that you didn’t love the process of multiple people helping and needing an escort. I started thinking about it then, called a buddy—”
“From college,” she said on a laugh. “You have a lot of those.”
“We ‘bama boys stick together,” he said. “But seriously, I wanted to solve that problem for you. And about all the things I suggested last night? If I could go back and smack myself upside the head, I would.”
“You’re a doctor,” she said faintly. “You should know smacking yourself upside the head is never the answer.”
He laughed, then looked very serious. “I’m sorry, Elise. I am so, so sorry. I don’t want to fix you. I want to make your life better. A ramp? Easy. A harness? Simple. My heart? It’s…yours.”
She stared at him as a tear slipped free and warmed her cheek as it trickled down. “It is?”
“If you’ll take it.” He held her gaze with one so steady and sincere, it took her breath away. “I want the chance to spend however long you’ll have me moving obstacles, not because you’re broken, but because I’m crazy about you.”
Copper shook his head as if he heard—and liked—every word. Elise reached to stroke his neck, needing something solid under her hand.
She could push Wade away. She could tell him the risk was too big, that long-distance residences and careers and the unpredictability of her own body made this a bad idea. She had built a life on being practical, on adjusting to what was left after the accident, on not asking for too much.
But here she was, up on a horse by herself on Christmas morning because this man refused to let her fear be the only voice in the room.
“Okay, Dr. Reynolds,” she said, steadying her breath. “Climb up.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“Is there room for two in this contraption?”
He popped off the fence, landing with a thud. “There is now.”
“Then let’s ride…cowboy.”
He chuckled, secured his hat, slipped her foot from the stirrup and replaced it with his own. In one graceful move, he swung his leg over.
He settled carefully behind her, keeping most of his weight off until he was sure the saddle could take it. It did. Copper stood solid, as if two people riding him on Christmas morning was the most normal thing in the world.
Wade’s chest warmed her back. His thighs framed her hips, his arms coming around either side to lightly hold the reins with her.
It was the first time they were body to body, the first time she felt the whole of him pressed against her. It was…dizzying.
“Tell me if this is too much,” he murmured near her ear.
“Too much what?” she joked, leaning back into him deliberately, feeling the way he sucked in a breath. “Too much goodness? Too much perfection? Too much Wade Reynolds? I honestly don’t think there is such a thing.”
Laughing, he kissed her hair.
“Now, Dr. Fix-It, let go of the reins,” she ordered. “I’ve got them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and there was more than a little awe in his voice as he rested his hands lightly on her waist instead.
She clicked her tongue and flicked the reins, and Copper started walking forward. They paused at the paddock gate and he lifted the latch, letting her lead them out for the first time she’d ever left the enclosure on horseback.
The first time she ever felt a man against her. The first time she fell in love.
Lots of firsts for Elise Hale this Christmas morning.
She let out a giddy giggle, looking up at the clouds in the sky to thank whoever ran this world. He’d just worked a miracle.
“Hey, Elise?” Wade said quietly in her ear.
“Hmm?”
“Will you be my girlfriend?” The question was simple, almost boyish, threaded with humor and something very real. “Officially. So when people ask why I’m hanging around Utah grinning like an idiot, I can give them a respectable answer.”
Her heart swelled so full she wondered how it stayed inside her ribs.
She turned as far as the saddle and her body would allow, reaching up to loop an arm around his neck.
It wasn’t the smoothest maneuver in the world—her hip strap tugged a little, Copper snorted in mild offense at all the shifting—but Wade steadied her easily, one arm banded around her middle.
“You sure you’re up for all the maintenance?” she asked, searching his face. “The ramps and the schedules and me getting mad when you try too hard?”
“I’m counting on it,” he said. “And for the record, I don’t see maintenance. I see…us. Figuring things out. Together.”
He was close enough now that she could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, the faint line on his chin from some long-ago mishap. With Murphy, no doubt. Snow dusted his lashes. He looked like every good decision she’d ever been too scared to make.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be your girlfriend.”
His answering smile made her feel like the sun had come up inside her chest. Then he kissed her, properly this time, his mouth warm and sure and a little tentative at first, like he was giving her every chance to pull away.
She didn’t. She finished the kiss, turned, and snapped the reins just like the cowgirl she really was.