Page 25 of The Trade Deadline

Chapter 17

Lars

Lars didn’t get nervous before games. That was a well-documented fact. Excited, sure. Maybe even a little angry, if it was against the Otters. Nervous? No fucking way, and fuck you for suggesting it.

But his stupid, treacherous heart was nervous about facing the Prowlers. Which was so fucking stupid. Lars hadn’t done anything wrong.

Like an idiot, he’d thought he was doing a good job hiding it. When he was a kid, his grandparents had always known when he was lying or upset, or by contrast when he was excited or proud, but he’d assumed that was simply because he’d been young and that over the years he’d…gotten better at hiding it. But the way the whole team had looked at him since the flight out, Lars knew he was as bad as ever.

Lars hated pity and being babied, and it had grated on him that they were treating him like he was about to shatter. He’d gotten through his parents’ and grandfather’s death and Anders’s disappearance; a single game wouldn’t break him. All their talk about relaxing and not worrying only made it worse.

Which was actually a blessing, because it mercifully brought Ryan to his hotel room that night. Thank fuck he was too wound up to do any of the stupid ideas that his brain helpfully supplied when it heard “Ryan Russell and me, alone in my hotel room.” They shared a beer from the minibar and played Xbox until it was clear they’d stayed up well past Ryan’s bed time. Lars’s stress might’ve embarrassed him in front of the Blue Crabs, but it had orchestrated him spending a whole evening alone with Ryan. He got to see Ryan bleary-eyed and yawning, enjoy his sleepy smiles and terrible attempts at trash talk, and be impressed that Ryan took to the game so quickly despite having never played before. They ended with the Blue Crabs beating Team Sweden in eight of their thirteen matchups, though Lars couldn’t always tell if Ryan was letting him win.

Actually, maybe it had been terrible. As awesome as the evening was, it left his hotel room empty when Ryan eventually went to his own room. All Lars could hear and see were the empty places Ryan had just occupied; all he could feel was the way his heart ached for the company. He passed out easily, exhausted as he was, and drifted through dreams of dark eyes and strong hands, and the only person who actually offered to be there when Lars needed someone to get him out of his own head.

Yes, he sleepily jerked off in the morning, not even sure what fantasies fueled him but knowing heat rose in his cheeks when he ran into Ryan at breakfast.

“You ready to kick some butt tonight?” Ryan said around a cup of coffee, deep black and steaming. He didn’t drink caffeine, as far as Lars could tell, and there was definitely more stubble and less hair gel than usual, as if he’d only just rolled out of bed instead of hitting the gym early. Lars’s heart kind of melted.

“Always,” Lars said with a wink. He slid into the open seat next to Ryan, his own coffee a light brown that smelled more like sugar than anything else, with a pile of pancakes dripping in so much syrup it made Ryan wrinkle his nose. “Didn’t you see me last night? I was on fire.”

“Hopefully video game wins translate into actual on ice wins,” Ryan said dryly. Then they spent the rest of the morning doing a great job pretending there was no such thing as hockey and Lars hadn’t been stressed out about it the previous night. It was nice, actually. So nice he wanted to invite Ryan to his room again to play some more, but guilt stopped him. That and self-preservation. He liked Ryan too much as it was, and it was better for his self-control if they remained in supervised areas.

Though sometimes, when he saw Ryan smile and melted into those chocolate eyes, Lars forgot why he cared. If Ryan were into him, if this otherwise inconvenient crush were the least bit requited, would it really be so bad if they hooked up? If he was allowed to spend the evening playing video games with Ryan, who would ever know or care if they did something else?

The angry mobs that greeted them outside the rink answered for him: being caught would make their lives difficult. Made their careers difficult. He read unpleasant signs from former fans, heard their indistinct but definitely angry shouts, and endured their accusing glares as he walked calmly from the bus inside.

Their practice was closed to the public, thankfully, but that didn’t save Lars from the media. After they got off the ice, Lars was subjected to round after round of the same questions. Why’d you leave? What’s it like being back? Do you miss the Prowlers? Are you happy with your new team? On and on as he was forced to keep smiling and answer in ways that didn’t make anyone look bad, which basically meant saying absolutely nothing at all. Luckily nobody really expected anything from hockey players in interviews. All he had to do was drop phrases like “play hard” and “great team” and “focus on my game,” and everyone was satisfied enough to leave him alone.

“Nilsson,” Coach Thompkins called once he’d escaped.

Lars didn’t like the formal tone and almost turned around to walk back to the media room. “Coach?” he asked with less forced cheer than he’d mustered for the cameras.

“I’m officially putting you on the top line tonight.” He held up a hand before Lars could try to interrupt (he didn’t). “I’ve thought a lot about what you said about you and RJ, and I do think there’s something to it. But this is Portland, and I need my biggest guns up front.”

“Biggest guns?” he grumbled. “I think you mean biggest target.”

Thompkins shrugged. “Not much difference. If they’re after you, that’ll free up ice for the other guys. I’ll have Morgs and CC out with you as much as possible.”

Morgan Hayes and Connor Carter weren’t their best defensive pair, but they were the biggest. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen Connor fight, but he’d gotten to see Morgan throw a few haymakers already this season. Part of Lars appreciated the support; mostly he resented the feeling he was being babysat.

“I can fight my own battles,” he said, chest puffed up. It was true in a more theoretical sense. He was faster than most of the other guys on the ice, and he wasn’t small by any means: in the rare instance he couldn’t avoid a check, it didn’t do much damage. He could stand up for himself, but he was literally only good at fighting Anders. He literally only wanted to fight Anders. The physics of fighting someone else must be the same, he reasoned. And it wouldn’t come to that. The Prowlers had been his team; they wouldn’t attack him.

“Of course. But I’d rather have them out there as a deterrent. I don’t want to set a precedent with these guys that we’ll have to deal with in Baltimore come March. We force them to play a clean game, we end it in sixty, we put it behind us and head into Thanksgiving with something to be thankful for.”

The only thing Lars was thankful for was a two-day break from practice, five days between games, and not having to visit Ohio for the American holiday. Win or lose, Lars’s discomfort at being back in the place he’d called home for seven years wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed. He could only hope that next season, it wouldn’t be so bad.

The butterflies that had taken up permanent residence in his stomach only let him be when he was on the ice. During practice he regained his footing, and once the team stepped out for warm-ups, the worry disappeared. He knew from experience that once the puck dropped, he’d barely notice anyone on the Prowlers. Unless his opponent was Anders Nilsson, he generally never noticed anyone on the opposing team except in vague terms. “Easy to get around” or “good poke check” or “blocks shots” were the ways he referred to opponents in his head, just hockey-shaped obstacles to learn how to bypass. Honestly, he’d already done it to his former teammates, knew their weaknesses so that he could cover for them. Now he just had to implement it in reverse.

Then the Prowlers blindsided him. Just as Lars was sinking into that sweet headspace where he kicked ass, before the National Anthem could play, the fuckers did a god-damned video tribute to him. He was forced to awkwardly stand there, cameras on him, and watch the montage and listen to praise from his former teammates. He had to drag himself enough into the world around him to wave at the roaring fans and their cacophony of boos and cheers. All he wanted to do was play, but he was forced to publicly acknowledge what was probably meant as a heartfelt farewell to a valued player but in reality felt like a middle finger, a taunt directly from Rob Mackey himself.

It was admittedly a nice video. He hoped they posted it online so he could send it to Mormor.

And if that hadn’t messed with his process enough, he made the mistake of actually looking at his opponent at the opening face-off.

“Marley!” he said in delight when he saw the Canadian center who’d clearly taken over Lars’s spot. He even had a silver-lined A on his chest to show it. “They made you an alternate captain! Congratulations, it’s well earned.”

“Piss off, Nilsson,” growled Marley, a man who’d never said a cross word to Lars in the four years they’d played together (including the time Lars accidentally hit him in the head with a puck during practice). “Hope Baltimore isn’t too disappointed to learn you’re an overrated piece of crap.”

Lars stood there, stunned.

“Fuck off,” Jake yelled, standing up his full six foot four height and drifting menacingly towards the center dot. Marley gave him the finger (or tried; with his glove on the effect was weakened), but did mercifully shut up. Lars, very admirably in his opinion, resisted the urge to knock him over as the puck dropped and instead won the face-off, which was almost as satisfying.

It didn’t get better when the game started. Any time he touched the puck, boos rang out through the arena. Whenever he tried to get himself back on track, any positive momentum was literally knocked out of him. He was checked and slashed and definitely tripped at least once, a constant barrage as his old team took it out on him for daring to leave. The refs let them, too—not a single whistle except once when the puck went out of play. It was hard to keep them as nameless faces when they kept forcing Lars to pay attention to them and hear their chirps each time they nailed him to the boards. Like it or not, he had to face the Prowlers as people instead of anonymous players.

He learned quickly that he didn’t much like the Prowlers as people.

On a certain level, he understood it. They felt betrayed by his apparent abandonment, even though the truth of it had nothing to do with them. He’d basically fled Portland and never looked back. But while he’d never been close friends with any of them, he hadn’t anticipated them to come after him like this.

“You okay?” Ryan asked after the second.

No , he wanted to say. I'm bruised all over, my former teammates are trying to murder me, and all I have to show for my efforts are two measly shots on goal. They’re laughing at me on the bench, in the stands, at home. They’re happy I’m sucking and on a team that has slim playoff prospects.

“Great,” he said with more forced cheer than he’d mustered all day. After Ryan had tried to help him, he didn’t want him to think the effort was wasted. “Gonna score any moment.”

Anyone else would’ve laughed and let it go; Ryan eyed him critically. “If you don’t score,” he said carefully, “it doesn’t mean anything. If we don’t win, don’t get it in your head that it’s a moral victory on their part.”

“It’d be nice to win, though.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Obviously. But no matter how they hyped up this game in the locker room or what people are saying online, no matter how big it feels right now, this game is basically meaningless. Big picture, it’s game twenty of eighty-two in year eight of probably another decade of games. Who fucking cares?”

Ryan rarely cursed. Hearing him so casually do so now was like an electric shock.

I care , he almost said, then realized he actually didn’t care. It wasn’t him to care about this game more than their game next week or the one a few days ago. Like he didn’t care about the first- or second-line bullshit, eighty-two games a year (seventy-nine games, he mentally corrected; he wanted to be first line against Anders), it didn’t matter to him who was across the ice. How fucking dare the Portland Prowlers try to take that power away from him?

“Who fucking cares,” Lars agreed.

“Atta boy.” Ryan slugged him on the shoulder. “But honestly, I do kinda want to win. They’ve been jerks all night.”

“Jerks” was only the tip of the iceberg, but he could tell that was Ryan being his meanest. It was cute, the way he always tried to put the most positive spin possible on everyone but himself, and Lars appreciated that even Ryan’s positivity couldn’t rescue his opinion of the Prowlers. Though Lars had about a dozen harsher words than “jerks” he’d use.

He hoped the third period would go quickly, but given the 0-0 score it wasn’t likely. The longest games were the ones you were losing by a lot and the scoreless ones, in his opinion. He just wanted to be put out of his misery so he could regroup and come back stronger for having gotten through this.

Unfortunately, he was both right and wrong. The period dragged until about halfway through, when he was tripped so blatantly on a breakaway that the refs couldn’t ignore it. Better yet, after much discussion among the zebras, they awarded him a penalty shot. Lars had won a Stanley Cup in this very building, and the place had never been so loud as when they booed him while he awaited the go-ahead on the shot.

Lars stared down Knapp. Knapp was a good goalie. Not Vezina Trophy caliber, though he’d never say it to the man’s face, but solid. He was left-handed, his blocker and glove in opposite hands to most netminders, which made him a little more challenging to face. For some people, anyway. The ref blew the whistle, and Lars started forward at a leisurely pace.

Knapp was guaranteed to catch anything Lars shot to the left. Knapp knew that Lars knew this. Knapp would expect him to make a move and go blocker side. That was what Lars had usually done in practice, even to the right-handed goalies. He’d beaten Knapp that way dozens of times.

Lars picked up speed and started his move to the blocker side…

And shot left.

It went in the top corner, right above Knapp’s outstretched glove, his body out of position as he’d committed too far to the right post.

There was a deafening silence, one that Lars and the Blue Crabs did their best to fill. Their shouts were just starting to echo through the arena before the boos drowned them up, somehow louder than ever. Lars didn’t care. He skated past Knapp and raised his hands like a gladiator, asking if they were entertained and knowing they were despite themselves. They gave him the finger, they pounded the glass, they screamed at him, and yet he knew they’d be talking about this game for years.

Lars Nilsson left us and then the bastard had the audacity to score on a fucking penalty shot when he came back.

Damn fucking right he did.

When the Prowlers rallied to first tie and then eked out a game winning goal in the last minute of play, Lars didn’t even care. He blew the crowd a kiss before he disappeared back down the tunnel and was immensely glad he would never have another first game back in Portland.

Thompkins was the only one with a dour face in the locker room. Everyone else clapped Lars on the back and congratulated him on the penalty shot.

“Knapp looked like he was about to break his stick.”

“You see their bench? They wanted to fucking murder you, Nilsy!”

“They’re never gonna forget this game.”

“Never gonna live it down either.”

But it was Ryan’s quieter praise on the bus to the airport that had him grinning the whole flight back.

“That was probably the sexiest penalty shot I’ve ever seen,” he joked.

“It was just a shot. I didn’t even do anything fancy.”

“You were totally in his head,” Ryan said. “You didn’t need a move. That’s what makes it sexy.”

As much as he laughed it off and told himself it was a teammate complimenting another teammate, he could never unhear Ryan Russell calling him sexy.