All Broke Down (Rusk University #2)(74)
Author: Cora Carmack

Right before kick off we get a mass text from Stella.

I expect pictures! And updates! And if any of those punks suck it up, you guys better yell at them for me.

Dallas smiles, and we send her a picture of the three of us, decked out in Rusk gear, holding up our wildcat claws. Dallas keeps up a steady stream of updates for her as the game begins, and then I get sucked into watching Silas play.

I can’t see his face. But I know by the way he holds himself, the way he moves . . . I know he’s in his element. And I know he’s happy. And I swear I’m so full of pride and joy for him that I’m about to burst at the seams. Or start crying. One or the other.

I could make an effort to understand more about the game, to expand upon the knowledge that I learned last time, but I figure that can wait for another time. Today I just glue my eyes to number twenty-two and watch him do what he loves.

Football grounds him, and I will love football for all my days if only for that very reason.

It’s strange, really, to think how quickly my life has changed. I’m still figuring out what I like and what I don’t (with Silas’s help, of course). And I know I won’t undo a life of pretending in just a week. It will take time. Time to break the habits. Time to form new ones.

But I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve got new friends, new goals, new interests. It’s exciting and overwhelming, but beneath all that . . . there’s a calm that I’ve never felt before. I no longer feel the need to search for things to do, ways to ingratiate myself to people. I don’t have anything to prove, not to anyone else, anyway.

And Silas . . . he’s technically new, too, but it doesn’t feel that way.

As I watch him move across the field, graceful and strong and fearless, I can barely remember how I felt before him. I try to think back to the way things had been with Henry, but that seems like a different life, a different me.

And everything about those memories is muted and dull.

The team has now moved across the field, and they’re only yards away from the other team’s end zone. I watch Carson hand the ball off to Silas and he pushes through the huddled mass of players, breaking through and crossing the white line painted onto the field, putting Rusk’s first points on the board. I know it was probably incredibly difficult, all those big, bulky bodies in the way, but Silas makes it look so easy.

He’s good at crossing lines. Pushing boundaries.

He pushed mine, and because of it, I can breathe.

I love Silas Moore, and I feel pretty certain that because of that, my life will never feel muted again.