Silver Opportunity

Chapter Thirty

*six months later (in February)*

"It went well!" Kendall exclaimed through the phone. "He's cleared to leave the house and do physical exercise, with caution of course."

"That's great!" Molly said, grinning and giving me thumbs up. "So are you guys coming to the barn now? Archie's been missing his best friend."

"Yes, we're going now," Leo said. "We'll be there in like thirty minutes. See y'all then!"

"See you!" I said before ending the call and turning to Molly. "Well, today's the day."

"Today's the day."

In the past six months, so much had changed. Molly and I were over halfway done with high school. I had applied and gotten into four schools, and while I hadn't fully decided yet, I had an idea about where I was going. I still had a few more months before I had to commit.

Titan was now an even more incredible horse. He was completely bombproof, responsive, and seriously elegant. On top of the blind rider training, Molly had been schooling him in dressage. She was able to unlock some part of his brain that just completely changed the way he moved and thought. He was super chill when it came to jumping, and we were successfully jumping blind courses. Nothing super crazy, but enough to get us excited about what Leo could do with him.

Leo. Honestly, the first month he was home was pretty awful. He still had the occasional dizzy or vomiting spells, but the scariest moment was when I was sleeping over and he had a seizure in his sleep. He had to go back to the hospital where the doctor said it was an unusual case of a singular seizure more than a week after a serious brain injury. He stayed in the hospital for another week before being released again, but even while he was home, he was high risk for another seizure. That was months ago, and he hadn't had another one since. Sadly, he was still blind but was able to detect shadows well. He could tell when someone was standing in front of him or when someone walked into a room. He's been adjusting well, but sometimes he still gets frustrated when he misses out on stuff. Other than the first couple weeks he was hurt, he has never gotten angry about his condition, but I could tell he missed the way life used to be.

Between Leo, Titan, Dublin (Aspen in Molly's case), and school, Molls and I were pretty busy. We ended up having to lease Archie out, which kinda sucked until we found the perfect rider for him - a twelve-year-old girl named Kate who was looking for more of a challenge. The two of them clicked and Archie takes such good care of her, and she's absolutely in love with him. We didn't tell Leo, but Kate likes to ride Archie in either pink or purple, depending on the day. Archie didn't mind - he soaks up every ounce of her affection.

Luckily for us, we found Kate untacking Archie in the aisle of the boarding barn.

"Hey, Kate, can you do us a favor with Archie?"

Thirty minutes later, Archie was over at my barn in the cross ties, next to Titan who was all tacked up in his stall. Kate was playing with Archie's floppy lips when Leo, guided by Kendall, walked in.

"Leo!" I called, heading over to him and giving him a hug. He grinned and hugged me back, burying his face in my hair. "I'm so glad you're here."

"I'm so glad to be here," he laughed. "God, I've missed this smell."

"Hi Leo, I'm Kate," she said. For a second, she held her hand out to shake his before remembering he was blind, then her hand shot back to her side and her face flushed from embarrassment.

"Hi Kate," Leo grinned. "I hope you've been taking good care of my boy."

"Trust me, he's spoiled," she assured him. "Here, let me see your hand."

Leo stuck his hand out and Kate took it, gently guiding him forward before placing his hand on Archie's neck. Leo's hand recoiled at first, shocked to actually be touching a horse again. Archie stuck his nose forward, wondering why his friend wasn't loving on him. His nose connected with Leo's hand and Leo let out an audible gasp.

Soon Leo was in tears with his arms around Archie's head. "I'm so sorry, boy, I-I got hurt and I-."

Leo just kept rambling to his horse and the rest of us sat there watching. After an emotional ten minutes, Leo pulled away and wiped his face with the back of his hands. I took one of his hands and squeezed it, letting him know I was here and that he was okay.

"How's Vegas?" he asked. "I haven't heard anything about him recently."

"Vegas actually got sold a couple weeks ago," I explained to him. "But his new owner is aware of what happened and said that if you ever want to see him again to just ask."

He nodded and wiped his face one last time. He found his way back to Archie and just kept loving on him. My heart melted as Kate handed Leo a handful of horse treats and helped him feed them to Archie.

Archie and Leo were inseparable for almost forty-five minutes, but after their little session, the two of them were both glowing with happiness. As Kate led Archie away, Leo addressed the rest of us.

"Thank you guys so much for letting me see him... well, not actually see him, but you know," he stammered, still clearly full of emotion. "Thank you. I needed that."

"Hey, wait, you're not done quite yet," Molly said. "We've got one more thing in store for you."

"Hmm?" Leo asked, clearly confused. I pulled Titan out of his stall and stood him in the aisle in front of Leo.

"Tell me who this horse is," I said, taking his hand and placing it on T's face. Leo felt around, going over the swirl in the center of his face and feeling around his nose.

"It's not Dublin, is it?"

"No, guess again," I said. His fingers moved around some more.

"Titan?"

"Ding ding ding!" Molly exclaimed. She had a helmet and brought it over to him. "Here, put this on."

"What is this?" he asked. "A helmet? What are you two doing?"

I raised my eyebrows at Molly, urging her to tell the story.

"Okay, look," she began. "When you got hurt, we all knew your life had flipped upside down. Em and I felt powerless and defeated, and we wanted to do something to help ease your pain. So we started training Titan for you to be able to ride him. I know he's not your favorite horse, but he's special and he absolutely crushed his training. We've worked hard the past six months to get him to this point, and now we're ready for you to ride him. What do you say?"

At some point during Molly's speech, Leo broke down crying. With my arms around him, I let him cry and cry some more.

"Guys, I don't know what to say," he said as he took a deep breath to try and calm himself down.

"Don't say anything," I smiled at him. "Just ride."

And ride he did.