Page 117 of The Trade Deadline
The car jerked to a stop at a red light, Lars having hit the brakes too sharply. “I think I know my own brother,” he said and hit the gas too harshly as the light turned green.
Spoiledechoed in his head.He doesn’t want to understand.
“Sure,” Ryan agreed. “I know my sisters well, too, but sometimes people know them in ways that I can’t see, because they’ve never had to share a bathroom with them or gotten bossed around by them or?—”
“It’s not the same.”
“Okay. How?” Lars sent him a sideways glare, and Ryan held up his hands in surrender. “I’m trying to understand. The Anders you see and the Anders I see don’t match very well, and I?—”
“And you think I’m wrong. You think you’ve been in Cincinnati a whole month?—”
(“Twenty-six days,” he wanted to say. “Haven’t you been keeping track?”)
“—and you’re suddenly best friends? One month to twenty-six years of dealing with his shit and everyone thinking he walks on water? What, he say you’re a great center and you were flattered and decided to give him a shot?”
Ryan sat there, speechless. Okay. This was an argument they were having. A day before playing against each other. With no plans to see each other again after the game. Perfect.
But there was no time to mount a defense, no opportunity to apologize and walk it back. They were in front of the hotel, and Ryan had to go before someone recognized them and asked questions they couldn’t even answer for each other.
“You used to say I was a great center,” he said quietly. “If it helps, I didn’t believe either of you.”
Then he got out of the car and didn’t look back, hands buried in his pockets so no one would notice them shaking.
Chapter35
Lars
Lars questionedif 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, heknewhe 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 Ihaveto 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.
