Power Play, Pretty Girl
A FF Sapphic Hockey Romance — by Aurora North
Available wide at all major retailers
📋 Details
Pairing: FF
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Length: ~95,000 words
HEA: Yes
🏷️ Tropes
• Bi-Awakening
• Forced Proximity
• Captain/Teammate
• Praise Kink
• Slow Burn
• Only One Bed
• Coming Out
• Found Family
She came for a fresh start. She found her captain.
Sarah Patterson didn’t choose Seattle. Seattle chose her — at the trade deadline, in the form of a brutal cap-clearing move that ripped her out of the only locker room she’d ever known. Twenty-six years old, late-season, four time zones from her family in Vermont. New jersey. New rink. New everything.
The sublet falls through her first night. Her new captain — Jamie Chen, six-time All-Star, the steadiest woman in the league — has a spare room. It’s just six weeks. Sarah will be on her feet by Christmas. There’s nothing complicated about a teammate sleeping down the hall.
Except that Jamie has a rule about closeted women. Except that Sarah has been engaged. Except that the apartment smells like cedar, and Jamie’s voice goes Captain-low at the rink in a way that makes Sarah’s body do things she can’t explain. Except that one Tuesday at six in the morning, in a kitchen, with two cups of coffee between them, Sarah Patterson is going to look across the island at her captain and realize, with the calm of an absolute discovery, that she has been asleep for twenty-six years.
What follows is a season. A hit. A hospital. A confession on a hotel-room floor. A first time. A second. A photograph that goes everywhere. A trip back to Vermont. A six-forty flight out of Burlington in November. A locker room that opens its door. A captain who waits. A pretty girl who comes back.
💕 You’ll love this if you enjoy:
- ✓ Slow-burn sapphic awakening with explosive payoff
- ✓ Captain who calls her “pretty girl” and “good girl” in the dark
- ✓ Found-family hockey teams who quietly close ranks
- ✓ Praise-kink dialogue that lives rent-free in your head
- ✓ A heroine who comes back instead of running
- ✓ Real coming-out arcs with imperfect parents who try
⚠️ Content Notes
Explicit on-page sex (multiple scenes, FF). Praise kink and dom/sub-adjacent dialogue. Strap-on use. A dangerous on-ice hit and concussion (handled with care, no graphic medical content). A privacy-violating photograph that goes viral, plus the emotional fallout. Imperfect parental responses to a queer coming-out (resolved on-page with full reconciliation). One brief scene of vomiting during a panic moment. Mild references to a previous engagement to a man.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: The Trade
The GPS says I’ve got four minutes until I reach Tides Arena, and I’ve spent the last three of them trying to convince myself I’m not going to throw up.
Seattle is gray. Not the dramatic gray I pictured — the real kind, low and soft and a little tired, clouds hanging over the city like they can’t commit to rain. I’ve had my wipers on intermittent for forty miles. My whole life is in the back of this rental, stacked to the ceiling, blocking my rearview. I haven’t been able to see what’s behind me since I left Logan yesterday morning.
Hilarious metaphor. Thanks, universe.
My phone buzzes in the cupholder. I don’t need to look to know it’s my mom. She’s called twice since I landed. Both times I let it go to voicemail because the last conversation we had, back in the kitchen in Vermont three days ago, ended with her squeezing my hand across the counter and saying, “Honey, maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s time to come home.”
It is not a sign. It is a trade. A brutal, late-season trade from a team that had been my home for six years, to a team across the entire continent, because Boston’s new GM wants to restructure the cap situation going into next season — which is GM for we didn’t want you anymore, sorry, good luck.
I am twenty-six years old and I am very good at hockey and I am, apparently, a cap situation.
The light turns green. I take a right onto a long industrial street, and there it is — Tides Arena, squat and glass-fronted, with a big teal wave logo glowing on the side of the building. My new home. I pull into the players’ lot, park between a matte black pickup truck and a Subaru with a COEXIST bumper sticker, and just sit there for a second with my hands on the steering wheel.
You are a professional, I tell myself. You have played pro hockey for six years. You have been the first line on a contending team. You are not scared of a new locker room.
I am absolutely scared of a new locker room.
I grab my gear bag and my skates out of the back and head for the door.
The security guy at the players’ entrance checks his list, finds my name, and waves me through with a smile so kind it makes my eyes sting. Pull it together, Patterson. I follow the signs to the home locker room, and the hallway smells exactly like every rink I’ve ever been in — rubber matting, old Zamboni exhaust, a ghost of sweat that no amount of cleaning ever really kills. It’s weirdly comforting. Like someone turning on a familiar song in a strange car.
The locker room itself is a horseshoe of wooden stalls with nameplates above each one, lighting that’s somehow both fluorescent and flattering, and a big teal Tides logo painted on the carpet in the middle of the floor. About half the team is here, in various states of gear. Somebody is blasting Kacey Musgraves from a Bluetooth speaker. Somebody else is laughing, the kind of big open laugh that carries.
Conversation doesn’t stop when I walk in. It just sort of — shifts. A couple of heads turn. A few nods. One woman near the far stall lifts a hand in a half-wave without looking up from the tape job she’s doing on her stick.
And then a tall woman in a Tides hoodie crosses the carpet toward me, dark braid over her shoulder, clipboard in one hand, and says, “Patterson?”
“Yeah.”
“Mari Vega. Goalie. Welcome.” She puts out her free hand and I shake it. Her grip is firm and her smile is the kind of thing you could warm a house with. “Your stall’s over here. Coach wanted me to grab you before you got cornered by Riley, who’s going to ask you nine questions about Boston before you can take your jacket off.”
“I heard that,” someone calls from across the room.
“You were meant to,” Mari says without looking back.
She walks me over to a stall with my name already on it — S. PATTERSON, 14 — and a fresh stack of teal practice gear folded on the bench. There’s a little index card taped to the top, handwritten: Welcome to the Tides. — Equipment.
I swallow something sharp.
“Coach is going to want to see you before we skate,” Mari says. “Her office is down the hall, second door on the left. But she’s on a call right now, so you’ve got maybe ten minutes. Change or don’t. Up to you.”
“Thanks.”
“You good?”
She’s looking at me with that same warm, appraising expression, and I realize she’s not just being nice. She’s checking. Goalies, my old captain used to say, are half the dressing room’s unofficial therapist.
“I’m good,” I say. “Long drive. That’s all.”
Mari tips her chin like she’s choosing to believe me. “Cap wants to meet you too. She’ll come find you.”
“Cap?”
Mari grins. “You’ll know her when you see her.”
She drifts off toward her own stall, and I sit down on the bench next to my gear bag and start unlacing my sneakers, trying not to look like a kid on the first day of school. Someone is definitely staring at me — a short, wiry blonde across the room who looks about twelve, with the kind of face that screams pest on the ice, angel off it. Riley, probably. I give her a half-smile and she beams back at me like I’ve just agreed to be her best friend for life.
I’m bending down to pull my skates out of my bag when I feel it. Not hear. Feel. A shift in the air behind me, the way you feel someone walk into a room before you see them.
“You must be Patterson.”
Low voice. Calm. The kind of voice that doesn’t rise to fill a room because the room already quieted for it.
I turn around.
Oh.
The woman in front of me is maybe two inches taller than I am. Lean. Not bulky — cut, the kind of cut you earn in a gym, not a weight room. Short dark hair, undercut on the sides, the longer top pushed back like she ran her hands through it on the way in. A black sleeve tattoo crawls down her left arm from under the rolled cuff of her henley — I can see the edge of a koi fish, the tail of something else, a character in Mandarin at her wrist. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. The kind of jaw that looks like it was drawn on purpose.
She’s not smiling, exactly. The corner of her mouth is doing something, but it hasn’t committed.
She puts out her hand. “Jamie Chen. Captain.”
“Sarah Patterson.”
Her hand closes around mine.
Her palm is warm. Her grip is measured — not one of those prove-a-point handshakes some captains do, not limp either, just — firm. Sure of itself. Her thumb settles over the top of my hand like she’s just confirming the shape of it.
She looks at me.
I mean, she actually looks at me. Right in the eyes. And she doesn’t let go.
It’s probably two seconds. Maybe three. It feels like somebody hit pause on the whole room.
My stomach does something weird. Low and tight, a little twist, the kind of feeling I usually get right before a big faceoff. It startles me. I make myself smile.
“Welcome to the team, Patterson.”
Her voice is so — even. It’s not a politician welcome. It’s not a captain-giving-the-talking-points welcome. It’s just an observation. You are here now. I see that.
“Thanks,” I manage. “Glad to be here.”
She lets go of my hand. Steps back. Tucks her hands into the pockets of her sweats.
“I read the tape on you from Boston. You finish well. You see the ice.” A tiny quirk at the mouth now. “We’re going to like playing with you.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint you.”
It comes out quieter than I meant it to. A little breathier too. Her eyes hold on my face for one more beat and then she nods, once, and steps past me toward her own stall, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath through an entire shift.
Across the room, Mari is watching me. She makes the smallest possible eyebrow movement, like she’s just checking a box on a clipboard in her head, and then goes back to taping her stick.
I sit down and start putting my skates on and concentrate, really hard, on not thinking about anything.
Practice is fine. I know how to do practice. My body does what my body does — I take drills, I play the drills like I’ve been playing these drills my whole life, because I have. My edges feel good. My shot feels fine. I put one in off the crossbar on a one-timer from the slot and the whole bench taps their sticks and a warm little feeling blooms behind my ribs. Okay. I can do this. I am a hockey player in a hockey locker room on a hockey team. I am fine.
Jamie — Cap, I’m trying the word in my head, it fits her the way a good glove fits a hand — plays center on the line Coach Whitlock puts me on. Her and me and a left wing named Christine who looks about thirty-five and has the calmest eyes I’ve ever seen on a forward. The three of us run a rush drill and we click on the second try. I saucer a pass to Jamie through a stick and she one-touches it back to me in the slot and I bury it, and she turns to me as we’re coasting back to the line and gives me the smallest tap on the shin pad with the blade of her stick.
“Nice pass, Patterson.”
That’s it. That’s all she says.
I don’t know why it makes my chest feel the way it does.
After practice, I hit the showers fast and change into jeans and a hoodie and go find Coach Whitlock’s office. She’s a compact woman in her late forties with salt-and-pepper hair and reading glasses pushed up on top of her head, and she talks for eight minutes about the system they run and then says, “I’m glad you’re here, Patterson. We needed a right shot. Don’t overthink it. Play your game.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Uh.” I shift my bag on my shoulder. “I had a sublet lined up in Queen Anne. Got the keys Fed Ex’d last week and everything.”
“But?”
“Landlord emailed me while I was in the air yesterday. There was — apparently there was a fire in the unit downstairs, and there’s smoke damage on my floor, and he can’t have anyone in there for at least six weeks. So.”
Coach closes her eyes briefly. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need —”
“I’ll find something,” I say, too fast. “It’s fine. I’ll just — there’s, you know. Hotels. I’ll figure it out tonight and I’ll be back to normal by the end of the week.”
She looks at me for a second like she’s deciding whether to push it. Then: “If you can’t, you tell me. We have a relationship with a couple of short-term places. We can make calls.”
“Thank you. Really. I’m good.”
I am not good. I am on a new coast, on a new team, in a new city, and my housing is smoke-damaged, and I have a rental car reservation that ends in two days, and I have roughly zero interest in any teammate pulling strings for me in my first twenty-four hours.
I leave Coach’s office, pull my phone out, and open up a map of hotels near the arena. The prices make me blink. April, in Seattle. Apparently everyone in the country is visiting Seattle in April.
I am standing in the hallway outside the locker room, scrolling through increasingly expensive options, when someone clears their throat behind me.
“Patterson.”
I jump, just a little.
Jamie is leaning against the wall a few feet away with her leather jacket half on — one arm in, the other holding it over her shoulder. Her dark hair is still damp from the shower. There is a drop of water sliding down the side of her neck and disappearing into the collar of her shirt. I watch it for about half a second longer than is okay.
“Sorry,” I say. “Hi. Didn’t see you.”
“I know. I was standing here.” Her mouth tips up at one corner. “Walls are thin in this hallway. I heard you with Coach.”
“Oh.” My face warms. “God. I’m not — I wasn’t trying to —”
“Relax.” She shoulders the rest of her jacket on. “I have a spare room.”
“What?”
“Spare room. In my apartment. It’s not big, but it’s got a door and clean sheets and it’s fifteen minutes from here.” She tucks her hands in her pockets again, that same settled posture from the locker room. “You can have it. Until you figure out your situation.”
“I can’t —”
“You can.”
“Captain, that is — that’s incredibly nice, but I really can’t put you out like that on my first —”
“You’re not putting me out.” Her voice doesn’t change, but her eyes do — they go a hair softer, and I feel that low twist in my stomach again, same spot, same feeling, and I still don’t know what it is. “I offered. It’s a spare room. I barely use that side of the apartment. Keep your money. Figure your life out. Find a real place when you’re not running on airport coffee.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I just watched you play for an hour and a half. I know enough.”
I open my mouth to argue and nothing comes out.
“Unless you’d rather do the Marriott,” she says.
“The Marriott is nine hundred dollars a night.”
“That is what I’m saying to you.”
I laugh. I don’t mean to. It comes out a little broken, a little loud.
“Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Really.” I rub the back of my neck. “I’ll — I’ll pay you rent. Or buy groceries. Or both.”
“We’ll figure it out.” She pushes off the wall. “I’m in the black truck in the lot. Follow me. Traffic’s bad, so stay close.”
“Okay.”
She turns to go, then pauses, half-turned back, one hand on the door.
“Patterson.”
“Yeah?”
“Welcome to Seattle.”
Same voice as in the locker room. Same even, settled thing. Same two seconds of eye contact.
Same twist in my stomach.
Then she pushes through the door into the parking lot and is gone.
I stand there in the hallway for a second. My phone is still open to a list of hotels. I close the app. I close my eyes. I tell myself, very firmly, that everything I am feeling right now is adrenaline and gratitude and the exhaustion of a long flight and nothing else.
Then I follow her.
Seattle traffic is exactly as bad as she said it would be. Her truck is half a car-length ahead of me, and I keep my eyes on the back of her taillights through the drizzle, through two merges, through a stretch of I-5 that moves at walking pace, through the long slow exit ramp that brings us up into a neighborhood of low buildings and bright storefronts and a park with a view of the water.
At a red light, I catch a glimpse of the back of her head through her rear windshield. She’s got one hand on the wheel. The other is on the radio dial. Her braid — no, she had an undercut, that wasn’t a braid, that was just the shape of her neck below the shorter hair at her nape — is wet at the collar. She tilts her head a little to the side, checking the mirror. Our eyes meet in the glass.
She doesn’t smile. She just lifts a finger off the wheel to acknowledge me.
The light turns green.
I follow.
And I tell myself, again, that it doesn’t mean anything — that the twist in my stomach is nothing, that the warmth in my face is from the heat vent, that my hands aren’t actually a little shaky on the wheel. I tell myself I am a grown woman who just got traded across the country and I am allowed to be off my axis for a day.
I tell myself a lot of things, on that drive.
I am going to spend the next six weeks finding out exactly how much of it was true.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now at all major retailers.
🔥 Free Bonus Chapter: Road Trip
Sarah and Jamie’s first away game as a (secret) couple. Hotel room. The team three doors down. A tap-out signal. A hand over Sarah’s mouth.
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