For Lias, the summer before S64 is a long lesson in letting go. Letting go of the first half of his juniors career, letting go of the way his life has looked up until this point, and letting go of feelings he’s known all along he would have to cast into the wind at some point or another.

He spends a lot of time reminiscing about the summers of his past; working in the restaurant with his sister and his parents, before he was fully entrenched in the all-consuming work of earning the right to be a professional hockey player. He still works a few shifts in the restaurant that summer, even gets Conner to come with him, and the two of them are pretty popular with the tourists, although neither of them are quite at the point where they get recognized outside of the context of hockey. That’s just fine with Lias; in a lot of ways, this feels like his last little grasp of relative anonymity. He knows there will be eyes on him in S65, seeing as it’s his last season in the SMJHL and he’ll be subject to all the is he ready for SHL play, is he ready to make the leap the further they get into the season. And it’s not that he slacks off all summer, but he does try to sit back and enjoy himself for the majority of it, while letting go of the expectation that his future summers will ever look like this again.

It’s funny, he thinks, how a place can be home for your entire life, and then you go out into the world and suddenly every time you come back, you realize how much the place has stayed the same despite how much you’ve changed as a person. Home will always be home, but the meaning of home starts to shift when you spend so much of your life in so many different places, and the feeling of it starts to center itself more around the people who are found in those places rather than the locations themselves.

He lets go of S63, of the pressure he put on himself to have a strong sophomore season in the wake of the draft and his unimpressive rookie campaign. The Battleborn are going to be a completely different team in S64, and he knows it, so he clears his mind, prepares himself to find his role in a team where he and Dave especially are going to be the veteran leaders they themselves once looked up to. He knows he’s going to be centering a line in S64, Gunnar’s already made that pretty clear to him, which is a show of trust and also a good sign that Lias’s game is moving in the right direction. It’s exciting, but he’s aware that the expectations of him in S64 are going to be a level up from what was “good progress” in S63, so he lets go of his old standards and starts to set new ones in place.

And he spends a good amount of time that summer letting go of the way he feels about Conner. He’s built up this idea in his head, he knows, of what they could be, of a singular kiss that only one of them even remembers but that’s somehow been haunting his waking dreams since the night it happened. He knows none of it is factual; this isn’t ever going to be some perfect fairytale where their on-ice chemistry turns into some storybook romance. But Lias turns twenty in July, and when you’re just barely removed from your teens, so many of the things you experience feel like everything. They celebrate his birthday there at home in Sweden with his family, and just like that, Lias isn’t a teenager anymore, and there’s a certain gravity that comes with that, some intangible weight to have his shit all figured out that he definitely doesn’t feel like he’s quite reached yet.

Somewhere out on the water at the end of the summer Lias looks at Conner, watches the way the sun plays on his skin, the face Conner makes when he’s focused on a task, and something inside of Lias breaks open a little. This was something special, he thinks. Something real, and special, and it’s over now, but it was there for this brief moment, and nothing really can change that. And he feels the longing start to bleed out of him, the way pain starts to fade immediately after the first impact, in a way that promises a bruise or a scar, the way pain always leaves but you’re never quite the same in its wake.

Conner goes back home, and Lias spends the rest of the summer trying to fill that space in his heart with other things, finding things to focus on that aren’t centered around this person who’s been such a big part of his journey so far. It’s not like he and Conner never talk again or anything; they still text almost daily, but by the time Lias heads back to the United States for training camp, he’s feeling a little more like this is something he can find his way without.

And he does. S64 is his best season so far, despite playing on a lower line than he was previously, and he’s fine with that. He centers the third line for most of the season, instead of playing on the wing on the first or second, and it works, things come together and he finds his stride and he puts up 59 points that season.

It’s a season of growth for Nevada as a team, as they all expected from the start with the large rookie class they have coming out of the draft, but it’s also something pretty magical. The rookies are good, much better than Lias was his own rookie year, and it’s a labor of love and a source of a lot of satisfaction to be able to serve as a mentor to them. He has one of them, Luke Laraque, on his line, along with Dobby who’s in his final season in Nevada, and they play good hockey together that season. The whole team does, which is the really impressive thing. From the start of the year, Gunnar emphasizes to the veterans, Lias included, that their primary goal this season is player development, helping these rookies carve out their own identity and place on the team, figuring out what works.

Lias takes that very seriously; he tries very hard to let go of all of his own bullshit, to just brush it off every time they face Regina and M’Baku Olubori seems to want to crush him into the boards personally at every possible opportunity. Whatever weird grudge is lingering there from their time in Nevada together at the end of S64, Lias has no intention of letting it get in the way of what he’s here to accomplish. He has work to do, his whole team does, figuring out where all of the pieces fit best, figuring out what the big picture is. It all just comes together much more quickly than they anticipate - somehow, with a squad that includes six rookies and lost three of their best players to call-ups that season, they set a franchise high points record and sweep their way into the second round of the playoffs.

They lose there in the second round, in six games, but somehow, it doesn’t feel like they’ve lost anything, because the whole season so far surpassed any expectations Lias had, and he’s pretty sure they surprised Gunnar as well. For someone who’s always been very open about his feelings, Gunnar as a GM is laser-focused and not generally very emotional behind the bench, but there are times when Lias glances over and catches him grinning shamelessly when one of the rookies makes a play that’s clearly impressed him. When they go back into the locker room after that game six loss, there’s some disappointment; there always is, after a loss, especially one that ends the season. But there’s also a lot of positivity, and a hell of a lot of optimism for the next season.

And then, once again, Lias heads off to world juniors, and this time he brings a couple familiar faces along with him from Nevada. Dave transfers to Sweden, as does Din Djarin, who is another of the rookies who had an impressive first year in Nevada. Along with the two of them, Gunnar’s son Matsmith makes the decision to eventually play for his father in Sweden, so he’ll be on the WJC squad with Lias as well, and he has high hopes for their chances in the tournament this season, even if they are rumored to be underdogs.

It’s a fairly long flight from Las Vegas to Cape Verde, where world juniors is taking place that season, and Lias spends a lot of it on his phone, scrolling through various social media, sending obnoxious selfies to friends, and trying to entertain himself. He’s never been good at staying still, and long flights are no exception to that. Lias likes to be in motion, to shove things and people out of the way to clear the path so he can stay in motion, and for as long as he can remember, he hasn’t been a fan of the long flights that his life has almost always required. He tries to distract himself, sleeps for a little while, thinking that maybe this is one of the few situations where being a little shorter than average is actually something of an advantage. He’s probably more comfortable than a lot of the taller guys are on planes anyway.

He’s flipping through his twitter feed when a name comes up that he usually makes a face at and scrolls past - M’Baku again, but this time it’s a tweet about Baku not getting selected for a roster at world juniors. Lias frowns, because he and Baku might have their differences (a lot of them, apparently), but he has never had any doubt as to whether their mutual agent has an eye for talent, and he’s seen enough of Baku’s play firsthand to know that somebody would have to make a serious error to not even try to get him on their roster. And he’s not sure what it is that compels him to reply to the tweet, but he does, says exactly what he’s thinking, that it’s bullshit and that the people who’ve left him off the roster have clearly not done their research. M’Baku replies, and he still calls Lias the clown emoji, but the exchange there seems…well, friendly is a bit of a stretch, but like they might not be arch-enemies, at least.

It turns out to be some kind of error with the roster releases; M’Baku is in fact on one that just hadn’t been announced yet, the last of them, but Lias is still glad he sent the tweet because it takes a little of the edge off of all the why does this guy hate me so much that’s been lurking in the back of his mind since the end of the half season they shared in Nevada. Lias has never wanted enemies, it’s just…something that sort of happens when you’re as outspoken about your confidence in your own abilities as he always has been.

He puts all of that out of his head, though, by the time they land. There’s work to do here, hockey to be played, good impressions to be made, and beyond that, there’s another whole summer ahead to figure out what he wants his last season in Nevada to look like.

Worlds doesn’t really go all that well. For all of his optimism, the Swedish juniors squad is outgunned in a lot of categories, and they don’t even make the medal rounds. And then it’s summer again, and everything is happening so, so quickly, because he’s about to start his last year in juniors and there’s a little voice in the back of his mind saying wait, wait, wait, I’m not ready for this. But Lias is starting to realize that life is just a series of things you’re probably not quite ready for - being fully prepared for things is a luxury that doesn’t come along all that often.

Johnny and Gunnar conspire to get him to some summer conditioning camp that Cassius Darrow (who is retired now and doing summer camps for people still in the game) is orchestrating, and it’s some of the most rigorous, demanding work he’s ever done in his life. But it’s also a chance for him to work with people he hasn’t worked with before, to branch out and get out of his own specific habits, which is very good for him.

The night of awards, Lias watches on TV in his apartment in Las Vegas. He has a few people over from the team and they make a little event out of it, with snacks and drinks and friendly wagering over the various awards. There’s not that many of the awards that Lias cares all that much about at this point, but Conner is nominated for ROTY and having one of their own up for something like that is a fun excuse to get together for team bonding and for them all to cheer for the one award they have a real connection to. And sure enough, Conner wins it, and they’re all pretty pumped about it. But Lias, watching on TV as Conner goes up there and accepts his award, wearing a suit and a tie that looks like he didn’t quite know how to tie it, feels a little twinge of something he definitely thought he was past.

He brushes it off, goes back to eating and drinking with his teammates, and he tries to keep not-thinking about it, all the way until the beginning of S65. And for the most part, he succeeds.



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Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3