Page 50 of The Trade Deadline
Chapter 35
Lars
Lars questioned if he was relationship material.
In the span of an hour, he’d managed to destroy the progress they’d made in the wake of the Prowlers game. Worse, he knew he was the problem. It wasn’t Ryan, and their circumstances could only be blamed so much. Lars just couldn’t keep his mouth shut and he was shit at hiding what he was feeling.
He regretted his bad mood and harsh words the moment Ryan was gone and it was too late to apologize. Convenient, because then he could convince himself he really would’ve apologized instead of making another dickish comment. He resolved to do it before the game, because doing it over text seemed worse. If it made him miserable for the next twenty-four hours, well, he had no one to blame but himself.
During warm-ups, that proved harder than he’d expected. As soon as the team had done a few laps, there was pretty much a line at center ice to talk to Ryan. Ryan often talked to players on the other team, which Lars found both endearing and odd, since personally he never wanted his pre-game rituals to be dependent upon other people. One by one, the Crabs came to pay respects to the only player they’d lost at the trade deadline.
Ryan had sent a message to the team chat about the trade just before he’d gotten on the plane to leave Baltimore. Generic stuff about keeping in touch, sorry to go, good luck, etc. Then he’d unceremoniously left the chat, leaving the rest of the team unsure what to say or who to say it to.
When it cleared up enough for Lars to get his turn, only seconds left before they had to go back to their locker rooms, they weren’t quite alone. They had space, sure, but Lars imagined every person in the arena as watching them.
“Hey,” Lars said, offering him a gloved fist.
Ryan looked at him dubiously and returned the fist bump half-heartedly. “Nilsy.”
He deflated. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said in the car?—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan said dismissively. He offered a smile that might’ve convinced someone else, but Lars knew it was fake.
“But I have to worry about it,” he insisted. “I was being a dick. I…” He scanned the ice as he tried to find the right words. His eyes landed briefly on his brother, watching them as he stretched. Lars’s cheeks grew hot; he forced himself to turn away and only just stopped himself from giving Anders the finger. “I don’t want to leave things like that.”
“I know you’re not a dick,” Ryan said, “even when you act like one.”
That didn’t really sound like accepting an apology.
Before Lars could try again, the horn blared for the end of warm-ups. Ryan tapped his stick to Lars’s shins before skating off, and Lars wondered how many more chances he’d get before Ryan was tired of his fucking up.
Before the game started, there was a video tribute for Ryan. As far as Lars knew, no other team had ever done this for him. His longest stint had been on the Crabs, and he’d been so determined to stay he’d made a bigger impact on the community than Lars had given him credit for. He watched Ryan more than the video (which he knew included a whole thirty seconds of footage of the two of them with a voice over he’d had to record saying how important Ryan was to the team), noting the way he teared up and the genuine appreciation on his face when he waved to the crowd. They roared in appreciation; it definitely wasn’t the fans who’d traded him.
As they squared up for the opening face-off—the first he could ever remember taking against Ryan in an actual game—he’d hoped to have another chance to apologize. He was wrong.
“I’m not Ryan right now,” he said to Lars sternly. “I’m RJ. We’re former teammates and we’re not going to take it easy on each other. You want Ryan, you’re going to have to wait a few hours. Got it?”
Lars scowled. He missed being able to switch off seeing the other players as obstacles and not people. It would probably never work on Ryan ever again. Like Anders, Ryan had made it to the level of “this is a person I feel a lot of things about and have to play against them like a professional even though it’s not possible for me to do that with them.”
“And don’t try anything funny with my defensemen,” Ryan warned, as if reading his mind. “Let’s just play hockey, okay?”
Lars didn’t meet his gaze. Instead he dropped into position for the face-off. “Then shut up and play.”
He lost the face-off.
Playing the Otters was never easy. They were a good team and they didn’t like him. He hadn’t ever given them a reason not to hate him, but still. It was like the Prowlers game all over again, though admittedly the hits were clean. They targeted him and gave him zero room, and he was always, always matched up against Ryan and Anders. He was faster than them, but the combo proved tricky. They both knew him too well, and often they cut him off from the move he wanted to make before he knew that was the move he wanted. Again and again, they stripped him of the puck and kept his line hemmed in their defensive zone. It was exhausting.
Then the real problems started.
First it was Anders making a hit on him and Ryan swooping in to grab the loose puck.
Then it was Ryan and Lars going at it along the boards in the Crabs’ zone, close enough he could smell Ryan’s aftershave, and it was maybe that revelation that distracted him. He lost control of the puck, and Ryan kicked it up to the point so Anders could take a shot.
It wasn’t a pattern until Anders blocked Lars’s shot during a power play and Ryan scooped it up to clear it.
Anders and Ryan were a really good team.
Anders and Ryan got to be a team. They could be on the ice together and assist on each other’s goals and talk on the bench and go to the playoffs together and hang out on the plane.
By the time the third period rolled around, Lars was frustrated and lonely. Sure, there were nineteen other guys on the bench. Lars had spent the better part of a season with them, and the usual brothers-in-arms mentality had taken root. It was in no way the same.
It was a 1-1 game near the end of the regular season. Of course it got scrappy in the third. Everyone was desperately trying to get the two points, and no one wanted to make it easy for the other team. Lars got manhandled more than usual, and of course it was usually Anders dishing it out. And he tried to ignore the fact that it was Anders, he really did. He tried to play the way Ryan had wanted him to, but after they spent a solid minute in the crease with Anders pushing and shoving and slashing, after the whistle, Lars felt he needed to say something.
“Fucking quit it,” he said in Swedish and got in his brother’s face.
Aaand then Ryan was there between them, a gentle but firm hand pushing Lars back. Pushing him , like he was the aggressor.
“Stop,” he said and jerked away from Ryan. “I’m allowed to tell him to fuck off.”
“He’s just protecting the goalie,” Ryan said evenly. “Let’s calm it down.”
“Calm it down?” He was struggling to keep his voice even. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job of being calm.” Given the circumstances and his record vs Anders, he honestly thought he should be considered for sainthood.
“So let’s keep it clean for another seven minutes, yeah?” Ryan said.
“You don’t have to be so fucking patronizing, you know that?” Lars snapped. He was pissed and looking to wound. “Mind your business.”
“Lillen—” The second a heavy hand came into his shoulder, he snapped. It was the last straw.
Lars swung around and threw a punch. He lost his glove as he came back on for another. The crunch of Anders’s nose under his knuckles was sickeningly satisfying.
“Mom and Dad leave me,” he yelled in Swedish, swinging wildly. “You leave! Morfar leaves! You take Mormor! You take my boyfriend, too! Enough!”
Anders stumbled back and held a hand to his face and kept one outstretched to fend Lars off. Hands closed around Lars’s arm to stop the next blow. He instinctively pulled himself free, punched Anders again and after he went down on the ice, Lars wheeled around to go after whoever had tried to interfere.
It was Ryan. Of course it was.
Lars deflected his hand so it ended up grazing Ryan’s chest, right across the stupid otter logo.
“Ryan, I’m sorry?—”
“You done?” Ryan snapped.
“Get the trainer!”
Both their heads snapped around as a ref leaned over Anders and a lineman called to the bench. There was a lot of blood on the ice and Anders was cradling his nose.
“ Storebror ,” Lars choked out. He felt like he was five, crying in Anders’s room the night he heard about the plane crash. “ Jag ?r ledsen . Det var en olycka .”
Big brother. I’m sorry. It was an accident.
He tried to move forward to check on Anders, but a ref swooped in and dragged him away.
“You’re done, Nilsson,” he said. “Five minute major and a misconduct for sure. C’mon, get to the bench.”
Lars drifted backwards under the ref’s guidance, watching as a trainer coaxed Anders to let go of his face to assess the damage. He did, and more blood trickled to the ice. Fuck.
When he got to the bench, he didn’t bother waiting for the penalty call. He muttered what maybe amounted to an apology and stormed down the tunnel to the locker room. What the fuck was he doing?
The trainers avoided him like they could see his bad mood, and he was left alone in the back to stew in his misery. The TV broadcast the game, and he was able to watch helplessly as they announced Anders likely had a broken nose and wouldn’t return for the rest of the game. Lars would likely have a call from Player Safety. Neither the Crabs nor the Otters scored in the dying minutes of regulation.
Weird to watch an Otters/Crabs game go to Overtime with no Nilssons there to decide the outcome.
Whose fault is that?
He watched silently from his locker stall, his hand throbbing and his pride wounded. He deserved it, watching the game play out back here instead of being out there on the ice.
When Ryan won the face-off, he felt a swell of pride. Belatedly, he remembered that he didn’t want that to happen, and he hated the conflicting loyalties.
One of the defenseman picked up the puck and immediately launched it to Ryan. He had a step on Pavel, maybe two, and as he sprinted into the offensive zone, Ryan would have the added confidence of knowing with absolute certainty that he was faster than Pavel. It was effectively him and Voronin, like in a million practices and drills before.
The Crabs needed this game more than the Otters, and Lars worried Ryan was thinking about that. That he’d shank the shot or not go full speed or something. That some sort of misguided loyalty might make him take pity on the Crabs. Unlike Lars, Ryan was sometimes too nice for his own good.
Ryan swept in at full speed, drawing Voronin to one side of the net. He had no support, no pass and no time to do anything but shoot.
“Russell’s in all alone,” the commentator said. Lars couldn’t tell if it was the TV feed or the in-house radio announcer. “Voronin squares up. Russell comes in hard on the right, fakes a shot, toe drag across the crease—RUSSELL POKES IT IN THE FIVE HOLE! GOAL! RJ Russell wins it in overtime for the Otters about twenty seconds in. I bet the Crabs are missing their former center right now, watching Russell get congratulated by his bench. What a fantastic game for him on his return. The fans don’t know whether to cheer or boo after that impressive display…”
There was a fair amount of both that Lars could hear from above as the sound leaked through the seats into the locker room. Lars watched the Otters swarm him on the ice and caught a few glimpses of his wide grin.
“Good job, s?tnos ,” he said and clapped in the empty room.