Page 133 of The Trade Deadline
He almost gave his brother the finger, then remembered this was a nationally broadcast game and he didn’t need more media attention. “Good luck,” he said with an overly sweet voice that dripped sarcasm.
“I’ll see you at the house,” Anders said, and then they both moved on to the next person.
Even as long as he and Anders had taken, the line was slow-moving as everyone on the Blue Crabs spent extra time wishing Ryan luck. They’d never been able to give him a proper send off, and there wouldn’t be a better time to tell him how much he was missed and appreciated than now when he was moving on after a well-earned victory. Lars’s heart was near to bursting as he waited, and then all too soon it was his turn.
“You played well,” he said, hand out, at the same time that Ryan said, “Jag ålskar dig.”
Lars stood there, frozen. The words didn’t compute. Ryan did all the work to shake their hands and leaned in to whisper, “I’ll meet you at your brother’s place tonight, okay?” and was gone before Lars had gotten a chance to recover.
There was someone else in front of him now, politely shaking his hand and offering platitudes, and Lars was staring over his shoulder at the back of Ryan’s head. It took monumental effort to go through the rest of the handshake line and it passed by in such a daze that he knew he wouldn’t remember any of it later.
Well, except that one part.
Jag ålskar dig.
I love you.
Chapter40
Ryan
Ryan was drunk,which was both not difficult to accomplish and rare during the season. The team had celebrated in the locker room with a case of beers that seemed to magically appear as soon as their gear was gone. Despite being a solid team, the Otters hadn’t made it to the Conference Finals in four years. Ryan had never made it even close to this far, so he accepted the beer thrust into his hand and drank it.
That wasn’t why he took the second beer, though. That was from nerves.
Why had he said that to Lars?
The idea had come by accident. He’d been in the airport waiting for the team bus, joking with Anders about Lars’s crab blazer and what they thought he would wear next. Anders’s phone rang and he flashed Ryan an apologetic look before answering.
“Amanda,älskling, we just landed…”
Ryan had politely drifted away to give them privacy, though it sounded like they were talking about practical things like dinner arrangements and if Mormor was coming to Game Five. It was only at the end that his full attention went back to Anders.
“Bye,älskling. Jag älskar dig.”
Ryan had definitely heard those words before.
“What’s that mean?” he’d asked Anders. “Jag älskar dig.”
Anders, who’d been sporting a soft smile, suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Have you heard it before?” he hedged.
“Yeah, Lars says it sometimes.”
“To you?” Anders clarified.
“Yeah, to me. He doesn’t speak Swedish to anyone else. Well, maybe he curses when he’s really angry, but he says there’s not much point in yelling at people in Swedish because he wants the person he’s pissed off at to know what he’s saying.” Ryan swallowed. “What’s it mean?”
The hesitation was enough that he’d figured it out, so he was completely unsurprised when Anders begrudgingly admitted, “It means, I love you.”
Hearing it made him revisit all the times Lars had said it. During sex was easy to dismiss, something said in the heat of the moment, but he’d said it other times, too. While kissing Ryan’s hand as he said goodbye. While falling asleep on the couch because they were too tired to finish the movie or move to the bed. While laughing giddily at one of Ryan’s stupid jokes.
“Oh,” Ryan had said as his world shifted slightly. When the pieces fell back into place, he didn’t think things were all that different. Lars had said it first, sure, but he’d said it in a way he knew Ryan wouldn’t understand. Knowing he felt that way helped settle Ryan’s anxiety about where they were headed, but things weren’t balanced yet. He knew how Lars felt, after all, but Lars had never heard it back.
“Did I get him in trouble?” Anders had asked and unconsciously touched his nose. It was still a little red, bent in a way it hadn’t been before. He’d been allowed to wear a bubble on his helmet up until the end of Round One, and no doubt he’d missed the protection once they started playing the Crabs.
“No,” Ryan had assured him. “I just gotta pay him back.”
That had been as far as his plan had gotten until the handshake line. He’d been practicing saying it, using online tutorials to help his pronunciation because he was too embarrassed to ask Anders, but hadn’t picked a time. He’d assumed he’d know when the moment was right, then like an idiot had blurted it out after beating the Crabs. Nothing said romantic like “we just eliminated you from the playoffs,” right?
