Powerless: A Small Town Friends to Lovers Romance

“He looks at me like an opponent, except we aren’t playing hockey right now. If we were, I’d give him a quick blocker shot to the face.”

The metaphor of hockey, a sport built on strategy and aggression, reflects Jasper’s broader perception of personal conflict and highlights his need for control. His instinct to retaliate against Sterling, a clear social rival, illustrates the reality that Jasper’s protective instincts manifest as anger, especially when he feels powerless outside the rink. The violent sports imagery underscores his discomfort with expressing vulnerability; he therefore navigates the emotional confrontation with Sloane and Sterling using tools that are better suited for the ice than for real-life relationships.

“The puncture from where the pointed claw of my engagement ring dug in taunts me, like the universe knows this marriage will make me bleed in ways that no one else will know or see.”

This quote vividly reveals Sloane’s emotional suffering at the thought of her ill-chosen engagement to Sterling, and the physical pain from her ring acts as a symbolic wound that transforms the very idea of commitment into a weapon and suggests that the relationship is more harmful than healing. She feels helpless, already trapped in a fate she can’t escape, and the idea that the marriage will make her “bleed” in unseen ways speaks to the quiet, invisible toll of her emotional repression.

“[M]y fingers loosen around the sparkly heels in my hand. I drop them like Cinderella.”

By letting go of the shoes, Sloane is symbolically shedding a role she no longer wants to play—one that is associated with her family’s forced ideals of who she should be.