Page 46 of The Trade Deadline

Chapter 32

Ryan

Ryan didn’t like being traded. He felt he’d earned that dislike. No one had ever asked him about a trade beforehand or even had the decency to warn him. No one had cared if there were teams he preferred or ones he absolutely didn’t want to go to. They just…did it. And then told him about it, uncaring what he thought about it.

Even without the whole Lars thing, he hadn’t wanted to leave the Crabs. That had been his one goal going into this season: to stay in Baltimore.

The Otters were making it really hard to hate the move, though.

The team was welcoming, which made it sound like the other teams hadn’t been. They had, friendly and patient as he figured things out. This was different, in little ways. The staff was more helpful finding him a place to stay. He was invited out for drinks right after his first game. The coaches were excited to have him, running him through the systems and seeking his input on where he would best fit.

And they let him pick his number. That alone had worn down his defenses.

Most welcoming of all had been Anders.

“I don’t see many of my brother’s former teammates,” he’d said in the locker room the first night and offered his hand. “Good to see you again, Ryan.” A pause. “Or do you prefer RJ?”

Again, people asking what he wanted. Wild.

“Ryan,” he said and accepted Anders’s hand. “Gotta say, I preferred playing with you than against you.”

Anders’s crooked half-smile was on the opposite side of his mouth as Lars’s. “Now that he’s not here to defend himself…” Anders leaned in like he was about to tell him a secret, and Ryan found himself leaning in as well. “Did you like playing with Lars? He can be…”

Anders left the sentence hanging, generously not pinning anything negative on his brother and letting Ryan fill in the blanks.

Ryan briefly considered lying. Trying to get on Anders’s good side by agreeing that Lars could be a pain. It wouldn’t even be a lie, really, just stretching the truth to what Anders expected to hear.

He didn’t have it in him.

“He can be a little intense,” he hedged, “but only when he’s playing you, honestly. He was great to play with. Probably my favorite teammate on the Crabs.”

Or anywhere. But his communication with Lars since he’d left the day before had been lacking, and he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to reveal to a virtual stranger who had a personal stake in the answer.

The crooked smile was back. “Yeah, the kid’s a little shit, isn’t he?”

That was it. A weirdly fond statement about how Lars was kind of a dick to him. Not really anything to justify Lars’s absolute loathing for his big brother, except that maybe Anders didn’t take his grudge very seriously.

If Ryan were built like Anders Nilsson, he probably wouldn’t take it seriously, either.

* * *

Ryan scored in his first game as an Otter, which helped endear him to the whole team. They gave him the puck with a label and crudely drawn Otter, and they gave him Player of the Game, complete with a hat that was shaped like an Otter’s head. It was nice to be appreciated, and he couldn’t remember being appreciated like this in years.

Except by Lars, who had only sent him a single emoji in the last 24 hours.

* * *

“Ryan!”

Ryan whipped around in surprise at the female voice calling his name. He’d just finished his first practice with the Otters and worried he’d have to do media stuff while all sweaty and exhausted. They’d already done a bunch of promo pictures of him in his new jersey, and he’d thought that would buy him some more time.

But when he turned around, there was a beautiful blond in an Otters jersey, something about her familiar but unplaceable.

She took pity on him and smiled brightly, perfect white teeth shining. “Sorry, I’m Amanda. Anders’s wife. The boys have talked so much about you, I feel like I know you already, but of course we’ve never actually met.”

Anders’s wife? Yeah, that fit the blotchy mental picture he had. “I remember you guys coming to our game in town. You were there with your kids and had a sign for Lars.”

She beamed at him. “Oh my gosh, the kids love Uncle Lasse. We do it every time Lars comes to town. Used to only be once a season. The kids were so excited when they found out he was moving closer and it could be twice.”

“I met Anton at the All Star Game,” he said. “Cute kid. Made Lars act like a kid, too.” He laughed, realizing she must know Lars as well as he did. “Well, more of a kid.”

She giggled. “He and Anton get along well. Must be a younger brother, thing. They team up against Astrid sometimes. Drives her bonkers, but Lars is good about evening it out.”

Anders. Amanda. Astrid. Anton.

“That’s…a lot of A names,” he blurted out, then felt bad. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it! Most people are too polite to say anything, but we obviously did it on purpose. I love when people notice!”

She was tiny, probably not more than 5’5”, and so very pretty and very bubbly. Opposite to Anders’s stoic demeanor in every way Ryan could pinpoint.

“I’m glad you don’t think I’m polite.”

She slapped a hand over her mouth then put it on his shoulder. “Oh my gosh ! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—” Then she saw his grin and swatted his arm. “You’re mean, teasing me like that! You’ll fit in well here. Welcome to the team, by the way. Anders has been singing your praises since Vancouver. Anton, too, but any hockey player who gives him the time of day is suddenly his favorite person ever. If Anders likes someone, that’s something. He’s happy to have you on the team, by the way. Anders, I mean. Anton, too, probably. He had no idea you were coming but boy was he happy.”

She seemed like a babbler, happy to talk and make the listener feel important. Anders, man of few words. Amanda, woman of many.

Ryan couldn’t lie: he liked her.

And it felt like she was trying to tell him something without directly saying it. That his being here wasn’t Anders’s doing. Ryan had never considered the possibility—players controlled so little of the big picture—but he realized too late that Lars might think that.

“Tell Anton he was my favorite player at the All Star Game.” They exchanged numbers, Amanda insisting that as the Captain’s wife she needed everyone’s contact info for social gatherings like their pre-playoffs kickoff party.

Ryan headed to his car, imagining a world where Lars and Anders played together and had Amanda as a positive influence between them. They probably had world peace in that alternate reality, with that kind of magic.

* * *

Usually, after a move, he’d get laid. Burn off some pent-up energy and frustration and all that. First road trip, that was always his game plan. The thought didn’t even occur to him on their night off in Austin, and not just because he hated Austin. Or rather, it did occur to him when he was alone in his hotel room after a pleasant evening out with the guys. It was only then that he realized he’d missed his opportunity, and more importantly, he didn’t care.

There was only one person he wanted, and he’d be willing to give up sex to have him, which was a whole sort of complicated he didn’t want to unpack.

i miss you

Three dots appeared immediately. Disappeared. Reappeared. They danced on and off the screen until finally he got a “same” back. If Ryan hadn’t been watching, it’d be easy to think Lars didn’t care or that this was easy for him. That things had run their course. Despite the lack of communication, Ryan was fairly certain that wasn’t the case at all.

Ryan was trying, and even if it barely showed, Lars was, too. Ryan was struggling, but he had the distraction of a new team, a new town, a new everything. The only life Lars had had in Baltimore included Ryan. It must be hard to look around and see all the places Ryan had been but suddenly wasn’t. The closest things Ryan had to deal with were an empty hotel room bed, and any time he looked at Anders and saw just enough similarities to know he was a Nilsson, but the wrong one.

Being around Anders was actually comforting: each time he spotted another difference between the two brothers, he was glad he could still remember Lars so clearly.

* * *

It was two, maybe three weeks after the trade that the news came in. They’d been on a plane to Alberta, arriving on a cloudless Saturday afternoon. As they walked off the plane, a lot of guys reached for their phones to turn off airplane mode. Usually it was guys with significant others or kids, checking on how their family was after they’d been in the air and assuring everyone at home they’d landed safely. Ryan was normally in no rush, but he’d gotten into the habit of checking his phone in case Lars had messaged him.

He’d wished Lars luck before his game, a rematch against the Prowlers. Not so much because he thought Lars could use the luck, but because he knew it was hard for him to face his old team. They’d been such jerks to him last time, and he wanted Lars to hear something positive from someone who understood. Not that he expected a reply besides or maybe ??, but it was better than no reply.

As his phone reconnected with the world, several alerts came through at once. He ignored most of them, starting with Lars’s predictable thumbs up and working his way from there.

Tanner

bro. this is a big deal right?

There was a link to a TikTok attached. Ryan didn’t click it; this wouldn’t be the first time Tanner had sent him a video of some game or other. It was either too quiet for him to listen to in public or too loud, and he’d have to shut it off and apologize. It could wait until the hotel.

He had another message, one from Amanda Nilsson. She’d messaged him once or twice with recommendations for places in Cincinnati, which he’d appreciated, but he couldn’t think why she’d text him now. Weirder, when he opened the message he saw it was sent to both him and Anders. Was it a meme or something? She seemed like the type to send memes to friends, but he couldn’t imagine there was very much overlap between him and Anders. And why not send it separately? Unless maybe it was a press thing about them?

Amanda Nilsson

red alert

And then a link to what looked like the same TikTok. That was ominous.

He looked up from his phone to Anders, who was frowning down at his own. They made eye contact, Ryan shrugging when Anders arched an eyebrow in question. Maybe he should watch it now.

Anders had been in front of him as they filed through the airport to the team bus, but he hung back to wait for Ryan. They shared a concerned look before they each clicked on the link.

It was footage of someone’s TV broadcast of the Crabs game, somewhere in the lower bowl. Ryan immediately recognized the blue and maroon jerseys and almost as quickly saw it was today’s matinee versus the Prowlers. Lars was against the boards, one of the Prowlers coming in hard and—oh, God—was he about to watch Lars get injured?

He heard something like a growl from Anders, no doubt thinking the same thing. The idea of Lars being hurt made him want to throw up. He couldn’t look away, though.

Lars nimbly dodged the check, and the player flew straight into the boards. The crowd cheered, then again when Lars blatantly cross checked the guy. Ryan gulped as they both dropped the gloves. Was this what Amanda wanted to show them?

The player from the Prowlers was shouting as he threw some punches, and Ryan held his breath for each. But then Lars grabbed the other guy and got a couple very good hits in. Ryan’s relief at the guy falling to the ice was short lived, because Lars then stood over him and screamed. Most of it wasn’t clear, but enough was.

“…because they found out I’m gay…asshole!”

The crowd screamed again and the video ended, looping into another video that Ryan couldn’t care less about.

Ryan and Anders sucked in a breath.

“Shit,” Ryan said at the same time Anders said, “ J?klar .”

They shared another wide-eyed look.

“You don’t think…?” Ryan started, but was unsure what else to say.

For the first time since Ryan had met him, Anders looked concerned. “Even if the audio wasn’t clear, there’s probably an angle where you can read his lips.” He frowned. “I wondered why he left Portland. Did you know?”

“I…well, I didn’t know , but he’d implied .”

Anders’s scowl deepened. “Will this hurt him on the Crabs? It’s too late to change teams this season?—”

“He’ll be fine,” Ryan assured him. “The Crabs are cool. They don’t care, I promise. They’ll support him.”

“Good.” He looked relieved. “I don’t know that that means he’ll be fine, though.”

“Yeah, good point.” Ryan clutched his phone to his chest. He hadn’t seen or heard Lars outside of TV clips since he’d left Baltimore. Would Lars even want to hear from him now?

Fuck it, he decided. Maybe Lars did and maybe he didn’t, but it was important that Ryan give him the choice, so he at least knew Ryan was thinking about him and he wasn’t alone in this if he didn’t want to be.

“Could you…buy me some time?” he asked, already backing away to find a quiet space. “Five minutes?”

Anders stared at him and nodded. “Five minutes. Good luck.”