Page 20 of The Trade Deadline
Chapter 13
Ryan
If Ryan had thought a night’s sleep might rescue Lars from Anders’s orbit, he was sorely mistaken. Lars didn’t even make eye contact with anyone as they boarded the bus to the arena, earbuds in and the music loud enough for the rest of them to hear. It wasn’t his usual pregame music, songs with a beat that would be good to dance or sing along to; it sounded like angry screaming put over some semblance of music.
Ryan didn’t like it. His discomfort lay uneasily in his belly as he watched Lars set himself up not for a game but a war. Worse, Ryan didn’t think it was his place to try and bring Lars back, to tell him whatever beef he had with his brother wasn’t as important as playing. He wasn’t sure he could even get through. The few times their eyes met, Lars barely acknowledged him if at all.
They skated onto the ice for warm-ups, Ryan doing his customary laps while he got a feel for the stadium. The place was electric, the air thick with the type of excitement Ryan hadn’t felt since the last time he was in the playoffs a few years ago with British Columbia. Despite Baltimore and Ohio not being rivals, the stands were already full and the glass was crowded with fans eager to get a look at their Otters and heckle the Crabs. There wasn’t much red and blue even on their side of the ice except?—
“ D?r ?r ni ju !” Lars shouted in excitement, his usual self emerging unexpectedly from his gloom. He said more, the sounds not quite forming words in Ryan’s head, and it took a moment for him to realize it must be Swedish. He stopped stick handling and stared as Lars skated over to two children with a sign pushed against the glass. It read in crooked letters: FARbrOR WE MISSED YOU SCORE A GOAL FOR US ?? and underneath in more even writing “Don’t hurt Pappa.”
Lars, his earlier moodiness completely gone, yelled in Swedish to the two children. A girl maybe twelve years old and a boy a few years younger, both with blonde hair more white than Lars’s honey locks but with the same blue eyes and smile, pounded on the glass in delight. The girl wore a blue Team Sweden jersey with Lars’s number, the boy a Blue Crabs one. A woman stood with them, her jersey the Otter’s yellow and orange, a C visible beneath the long braid slung over one shoulder. She gave Lars an open fingered wave and then pointed at the “Don’t hurt Pappa” part of the sign sternly.
“You tell him not to hurt Uncle,” Lars shouted back.
The woman shrugged, both hands up as she exaggerated the pose, and Ryan could just barely read her lips. “I tried.”
Lars laughed. He waved to the children, fist bumping them through the glass, then yelled, “Go find your seats! I’ll score for you!”
Ryan’s heart swelled. This was the man he’d accidentally started falling for, not the angry ball of rage. He smiled to himself, content to go back to his warm-up, but he didn’t look away quick enough; Lars turned away from his family and spotted Ryan. More proof he was out of his funk: he immediately skated over.
“Did you see my niece and nephew?” He was beaming and his accent was thicker than usual. “Cute, right?”
“I liked their jerseys,” Ryan joked. He hesitated before adding, “And their sign. Farbror is you, right?”
He nodded. “Father’s brother. They’re good kids. They cheer for me because I buy them ice cream if I win, and they think it’s funny to make their dad upset.” Lars chuckled, as if it were all innocent fun and not a game played on knives where he fully intended to pound their dad into the ice in front of them at the first opportunity.
“That was their mom?” Ryan asked, because what else was he supposed to say?
“Amanda? Yeah, she’s awesome. Too good for Anders, for sure.” An errant puck came their way and Lars swatted it out of the air with his stick. He barely even looked at it as he started stick handling. “But that means she’s also willing to put up with me as a brother-in-law, and she takes care of Mormor.”
“Mormor?” Ryan repeated. He’d never found not knowing Swedish to be an issue before.
“Mother’s mother. My grandma. She lives with them.” His expression turned sour. “She couldn’t come today because she’s sick, but she’ll be watching.”
Lars Nilsson was mostly known in terms of his hockey, including who his family was. His dad played for the Terrors, his brother for the Otters. But he was also an uncle and a brother-in-law and a grandson, and those relationships seemed to shape him more as a person.
“Your mormor watch all your games?” Ryan asked, voice light and teasing.
Lars picked up the puck and bounced it off the end of his stick. “Most of them. It’s easier now that I’m in the east. She doesn’t like to stay up for the late games, and if me and Anders play at the same time, she has to pick one to watch the next day.” He tossed the puck up and hit it like a baseball towards the net. “C’mon, let’s go warm up Vorny.”
Only once did Ryan get a chance to actually look at Anders on his side of the ice. He was easy to spot, several inches taller than most of the other players. His size wasn’t just his height, either. He was a solid man that looked like he had no issues keeping his goalie’s crease clear. Even from a distance, Ryan could see the family resemblance: blond, with the same jawline and nose, and the same grim expression that had been plastered on Lars’s face since the airport. Two angry peas in a pod, those Nilsson brothers.
If Ryan held any hope that Lars had regained his cool after seeing his family, it dried up during Lars’s first shift. He was over the boards before Ryan had fully gotten off. By the time Ryan was settled on the bench, Lars had skated right to where his brother was corralling the puck Ryan had just dumped in. Undeterred by his brother’s size, he pushed him into the boards and manhandled the puck away. He got a shot, a quick cover, and managed to get in his brother’s face to yell something in Swedish.
The game was…intense. The brothers set the tempo, with the rest of them at their mercy. It didn’t help that both Lars and Anders were clearly the best players on the ice, so if the rest of them didn’t up their effort, they didn’t stand a chance at being in the play. Ryan could barely keep up, and it left him huffing and puffing at the end of every shift.
Lars was thriving, though. He managed to steal a shift from their fourth line center when Anders wasn’t on the ice. He forced a turnover, got a breakaway, scored, and then made sure to celebrate right in front of the Otters bench where his brother sat glaring at him.
“ Du ?r bortsk?md ,” Anders sneered at him. “ Sluta bete dig som ett barn .”
“ Sluta bete dig som ett fitta !” Lars shot back. Ryan had no idea what they were saying, but Anders stiffened and looked like he was about to climb over the boards to wipe the smug look off his little brother’s face. Ryan had seen that look on his sisters’ faces before, and except in those moments when he was feeling particularly brave, it usually resulted in him running away while apologizing; Lars didn’t look the least bit sorry.
“You know,” Jake said next to Ryan as they watched the brothers fight over a puck in the second, “Nilsy’s only got five career fights and four of them are against his brother.”
Ryan watched with a grimace. They hadn’t dropped gloves yet, but he felt like it could happen at any moment. “Who was the other one against?”
“Someone on the Otters who got in the way,” Jake said.
“You saying he’d fight one of us if we got in the way?” Jordy said it as a joke, but there was a hint of worry there.
Anders slammed into his brother, knocking Lars flat on his ass and making Ryan cringe in sympathy. Lars jumped up and sprinted after his brother, clearly not thinking about hockey but revenge. The resulting cross checking penalty against Lars was hardly a surprise.
“...He might fight us if we try to stop him,” Jake muttered. He moved out of the way to let Ryan out for the Penalty Kill. “Maybe stay out of his way once he’s out of the box?”
That was the smart thing to do. Whatever poor fool got between the brothers was going to get flattened like a pancake.
It wasn’t an easy kill. The Otters rested Anders for the first thirty seconds then had him out the rest of the time. The man had a monster slap shot that Ryan made the mistake of blocking (thankfully it hit his shinguard, though it still hurt something awful), and the Otters seemed to enjoy setting Anders up for pot shots while Lars was stuck watching in the box. They were somehow able to hold off the Otters, Ryan getting a whole 45 seconds to rest before he was forced back on the ice to finish the kill. And then, with the seconds ticking down, Ryan got the puck and was able to do one of his favorite things.
The timing rarely worked out, but Ryan saw the pieces falling into place. With two seconds left on the penalty and nothing but open ice in front of him, the safe play was to launch it down to the other zone and run for a change. He faked the dump, then instead sent a pass up the boards. It left the Crabs’ zone with one second left, bounced to the empty space right in front of the penalty box.
Lars jumped out of the box and skated into the puck at full speed. He was a good ten feet behind the defense, the poor goalie left to face Lars one-on-one.
As the goal horn sounded, Ryan skated down the ice. Normally he would’ve changed after he sent the pass or at least after the goal, but he went to Lars. He could see Lars about to get in his brother’s face again, so he put himself right in his path. He pulled him into a celebratory hug and spun them so Lars was turned away from the Otters. Finally, blue eyes settled on him and he saw the second Lars Nilsson, the determined younger brother, disappeared and Lasse reappeared.
“That was sick,” Ryan said loudly. He punched Lars’s shoulder, earning a grin.
“Your pass was pretty perfect,” he agreed.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Your goal, dummy.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had better.” Then he lit up. “Hey! We’re on the ice together!”
“First and only time I’ll get a point for you scoring.”
Lars seemingly forgot to rub the goal in his brother’s face, since he skated with Ryan back to the bench to accept a line of fist bumps. The last few shifts of the game, Lars was mellower. Not completely himself, but a much more recognizable version. Ryan could feel the team relax around him, like air settling back in their lungs after a deep dive.
They lost 2-4, Lars’s two to Anders’s one, but the Otters were clearly more acquainted with the Nilsson Show and knew how to capitalize on it. At the start of the game, Ryan would’ve thought the loss would devastate Lars. Instead, he took it calmly and seemed content that he had at least outscored his brother.