Cross-Checked by Julia Connors Summary, Characters and Themes

Cross Checked by Julia Connors is a sports romance that explores the emotional complexities, professional conflicts, and romantic tensions between Alessandra “AJ” Jones, the first female general manager in the NHL, and Ronan McCabe, the Boston Rebels’ rugged, loyal captain.  Set against the backdrop of a high-stakes playoff season, the story unpacks the challenges of breaking barriers in male-dominated spaces, single parenthood, and navigating love where professional boundaries must not be crossed.

Told in dual points of view, the novel offers insight into two fiercely driven individuals whose past traumas, emotional scars, and deep sense of duty pull them together in ways that threaten to unravel everything they’ve worked for.

Summary

Alessandra “AJ” Jones stands at the pinnacle of her career.  As the general manager of the Boston Rebels, she’s poised to make history as the first woman nominated for GM of the Year.

Her role demands unrelenting professionalism, and though she projects confidence, privately she wrestles with self-doubt and emotional scars from an abusive past marriage and the loss of her fertility.  Her career is built on control, decisiveness, and an ironclad ability to separate personal feelings from professional decisions.

But Ronan McCabe is the one person who breaks through that armor.

McCabe, the Rebels’ captain, is equally burdened—this time by fatherhood.  After his ex suddenly dropped off their ten-month-old daughter Abby with no intention of returning, McCabe has had to juggle his responsibilities as a single father with the intense demands of playoff hockey.

His relationship with AJ is complicated.  Years earlier, when AJ was with a different team, she traded him after he intervened in a domestic incident involving her then-husband.

McCabe believed he was punished for protecting her, and that sense of betrayal never left him.

Their unresolved history takes a new turn when they discover they live across the hall from each other.  This forced proximity ignites not only the friction from their shared past but also a powerful mutual attraction.

Despite trying to maintain professional distance, their personal lives become increasingly entwined.  When McCabe’s nanny bails just before a critical game, AJ steps in and volunteers to watch Abby, momentarily blurring the lines between personal care and professional obligation.

Her actions stir complex emotions—for McCabe, admiration and gratitude; for AJ, long-buried maternal yearnings.

Their relationship continues to intensify.  A post-game confrontation leads to emotional revelations and a near-physical encounter interrupted only by Abby’s cries.

Both AJ and McCabe attempt to retreat back into their professional lanes, but the lines are already too blurred.  AJ arranges for her younger brother Nicholas to step in as a temporary nanny.

Abby warms to him instantly, relieving some of McCabe’s stress and allowing him to refocus on the ice.  However, the emotional tension between him and AJ continues to simmer.

One night at a game, AJ is injured while shielding Abby from a fight in the stands.  McCabe, seeing them in danger, leaps off the ice mid-game to check on them, showing where his priorities truly lie.

This act of care underscores his growing emotional commitment—not just to his daughter, but to AJ as well.  The two resume their relationship, privately this time, trying to compartmentalize passion and professionalism.

But as their physical connection deepens, so does their emotional vulnerability.  AJ is haunted by the risk she’s taking: if exposed, her career could be derailed.

McCabe, on the other hand, is certain—he wants a life with AJ and Abby.

McCabe’s sister Sloane soon enters the picture, serving as a pivotal figure in AJ’s journey.  AJ’s initial discomfort at being introduced to McCabe’s family fades as she and Sloane connect.

Their shared experiences as women juggling ambition and care provide AJ with a mirror—and a lifeline.  Through Sloane, AJ is reminded that her value isn’t diminished by vulnerability.

McCabe watches with awe as AJ fits seamlessly into his daughter’s life and begins to envision a future where she’s not just his partner, but Abby’s mother.

Their bond is tested when AJ’s ex-husband, Chet, returns.  At a gala event, he reveals to McCabe that years ago, he manipulated AJ into trading him by threatening legal action.

The revelation reframes their past conflict, showing AJ’s actions in a new light.  She had protected McCabe even while sacrificing her own emotional safety.

The couple finally confronts the ghosts of their past.  McCabe, moved by her courage and the burdens she’s carried alone, forgives her, and AJ opens herself up to the possibility of a future without fear.

Still, Chet poses a threat.  When he learns of their renewed relationship, he threatens to go public, hoping to spark scandal.

AJ and McCabe decide to take control of the narrative.  AJ, risking everything, announces the relationship at a press conference and withdraws herself from the GM of the Year nomination to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

McCabe publicly supports her, delivering a moving statement about her integrity, strength, and the love they share.

Rather than face backlash, AJ’s courage is rewarded.  The league refuses her withdrawal, and she wins the award.

She uses the moment to recognize the women who came before her, her colleagues, and McCabe.  Their romance has survived scrutiny, sacrifice, and fear.

The Boston Rebels don’t win the Stanley Cup in Game 7, but for AJ and McCabe, the real victory lies in the life they’re building together.

In the epilogue, they are still growing, still learning, but solid.  Their relationship is no longer secret, and the strength they found in one another continues to shape their journey forward.

AJ remains a respected leader in her field, now supported by a partner who sees her strength and nurtures her spirit.  McCabe balances life as a father, a teammate, and a man in love, embracing the roles that once terrified him.

Together, they prove that ambition and intimacy can coexist, and that the messiness of real life—parenthood, trauma, public scrutiny—can still make room for enduring love.

Characters

Alessandra “AJ” Jones

AJ Jones emerges as a formidable and complex character in Cross Checked.  As the first female general manager in the NHL, AJ is a trailblazer who embodies both competence and vulnerability.

Her ambition is not merely self-serving; rather, it’s deeply rooted in a sense of responsibility—to create space for other women in a male-dominated industry.  This high-stakes position demands perfection, which AJ delivers publicly through unyielding professionalism and razor-sharp leadership.

Privately, however, she battles the isolating consequences of being a woman in power, carrying the scars of an emotionally abusive marriage and the unrelenting fear of professional failure.  Her history with infertility and her emotional reaction to caring for Ronan McCabe’s daughter, Abby, introduce a poignant maternal longing that softens her otherwise impenetrable façade.

AJ’s dynamic with McCabe reflects her inner conflict: though she’s drawn to him emotionally and physically, she struggles to separate personal fulfillment from potential professional fallout.  Throughout the story, AJ’s arc transforms as she shifts from a guarded, rule-bound figure to someone willing to accept love and risk vulnerability, even at the expense of her career.

Her journey is about more than romance—it’s about healing, reclaiming self-worth, and daring to believe she deserves joy outside of work.

Ronan McCabe

Ronan McCabe is a layered portrait of masculinity reshaped by caregiving, trauma, and love.  As the captain of the Boston Rebels, he is authoritative and respected on the ice, but his most defining role is that of a single father to his infant daughter, Abby.

Unexpectedly thrust into parenthood, McCabe adapts with a fierceness that underscores his emotional evolution.  His protectiveness and affection for Abby reveal a gentleness that contrasts with his brusque, confrontational professional persona.

McCabe’s past with AJ—particularly the protective act that led to his trade and subsequent grudge—fuels much of his initial bitterness.  But beneath his anger lies a sense of abandonment and unresolved grief, not only from AJ’s decision but from missing his grandmother’s final days due to that trade.

His emotional honesty and deepening love for AJ unfold gradually, showing a man ready to dismantle his own defenses.  He exhibits profound emotional maturity in moments of quiet tenderness—changing diapers, offering AJ comfort during nightmares, affirming her worth in ways she has never experienced.

McCabe’s evolution is not just about accepting love but about prioritizing family over personal pride or professional gain.  By the novel’s end, he is a man who has redefined what success means: not just championships, but a life built on trust, intimacy, and shared purpose.

Abby McCabe

Though a baby, Abby plays an emotionally pivotal role in Cross Checked.  She is more than a plot device—she is the emotional fulcrum around which the main characters pivot and transform.

For McCabe, Abby is both anchor and motivation, the unexpected responsibility that forces him to mature quickly and reprioritize his life.  Her presence brings out a nurturing, sensitive side of him that contrasts with his gruff exterior.

For AJ, Abby represents a painful reminder of her infertility, yet also a source of comfort and quiet healing.  AJ’s growing bond with Abby allows her to access maternal instincts long buried under trauma and ambition, revealing parts of herself she feared had been lost.

Abby’s needs prompt vulnerability, care, and ultimately love from both protagonists, knitting them together into something resembling a family long before either fully admits it.  Her impact on AJ and McCabe’s choices makes her a silent yet powerful agent of change throughout the novel.

Sloane McCabe

Sloane, McCabe’s sister, brings a fresh and affirming energy to the narrative.  Her presence challenges and softens AJ’s internal walls, allowing AJ to experience sisterhood and solidarity in ways she’s long been denied.

Sloane’s admiration for AJ’s career achievements is genuine, but her advice is rooted in emotional wisdom: she gently prompts AJ to consider that personal fulfillment is just as worthy a goal as professional excellence.  Their interactions demonstrate that women supporting women can be transformational.

For McCabe, Sloane represents the family support he has always relied on, and her embrace of AJ signals his growing certainty that AJ belongs in their lives.  Sloane functions as a moral compass and a catalyst for the protagonists to imagine a future built on mutual respect, emotional transparency, and shared responsibility.

Lauren

Lauren, AJ’s best friend and marketing director, serves as AJ’s emotional mirror.  She offers AJ not only practical advice but heartfelt insight that helps AJ examine her emotional paralysis and the fear that dictates her decisions.

Lauren is one of the few people who truly sees AJ—her cracks, her courage, and her capacity for love—and dares to challenge her when she begins to retreat behind her professional armor.  In doing so, Lauren becomes a crucial support system, empowering AJ to recognize that fear-based decision-making will never lead to wholeness.

Her perspective is instrumental in AJ’s decision to fight for her relationship with McCabe and to redefine what strength truly looks like.

Chet

Chet, AJ’s abusive ex-husband, serves as the narrative’s primary antagonist.  His presence looms over AJ’s decisions, even before his physical reappearance.

Chet embodies the toxicity and manipulation that AJ has spent years trying to escape.  His threats, lies, and psychological abuse shaped AJ’s emotional restraint and fear of vulnerability.

When it is revealed that he blackmailed AJ into trading McCabe, it becomes evident just how deeply Chet’s reach had extended into her professional life.  However, AJ’s confrontation with Chet marks a turning point—she no longer yields to his intimidation, instead choosing honesty, love, and self-respect.

Chet’s character functions as both a symbol of past trauma and a foil against which AJ’s growth becomes undeniably clear.  His eventual irrelevance underscores the power of truth and emotional courage to dismantle manipulation.

Themes

Professional Ambition and Gendered Power Structures

In Cross Checked, AJ’s position as the first female general manager in the NHL is more than just a professional title—it is a battlefield.  Every decision she makes, from contract negotiations to standing on the rink with a baby in her arms, becomes a referendum not only on her capabilities but on the legitimacy of women in male-dominated spaces.

Her success carries the weight of precedent; her failures, real or perceived, have implications for every woman who may follow.  The novel doesn’t treat her ambition as self-serving or power-hungry.

Instead, it frames her career drive as a moral obligation—a pursuit to normalize female leadership in sports and to ensure that her presence is not an anomaly but the beginning of institutional change.  The emotional toll of this burden is made visible in AJ’s constant self-monitoring, her fear of scrutiny, and the guardedness she displays, especially when personal feelings threaten to blur the boundaries she has so carefully constructed.

Her role is not merely about strategic trades or press conferences; it’s about existing in a space that resists her and demanding respect without compromising her humanity.  Her eventual public acknowledgment of her relationship with McCabe is portrayed not as weakness, but as courageous transparency, signaling a challenge to the artificial binary between professionalism and personhood that women in power are often forced to maintain.

Parenthood, Surrogacy of Emotion, and Chosen Family

The novel constructs a nuanced depiction of modern parenthood through McCabe’s single fatherhood and AJ’s unexpected maternal instincts toward Abby.  McCabe’s navigation of fatherhood is laced with both love and logistical chaos.

From bringing Abby to locker rooms to trusting AJ’s brother with her care, his parenting is portrayed as improvisational but deeply intentional.  Abby is not an accessory to his character; she’s the emotional core that reshapes his decisions, reorders his priorities, and ultimately defines his vision of a future that includes love, stability, and permanence.

AJ’s interactions with Abby carry emotional resonance rooted in loss.  Her infertility and emotionally barren past marriages render her bond with the baby more than just affectionate—it is healing.

Holding Abby becomes a way for AJ to reclaim a part of her life she thought was permanently closed off.  What begins as a practical solution morphs into an emotional adoption of sorts, as AJ transitions from reluctant caretaker to someone McCabe imagines as a mother.

Their collective nurturing of Abby reconfigures the definition of family.  It’s not biology or legality that unites them, but mutual care, emotional trust, and shared responsibility.

Their relationship becomes a modern reflection of chosen family—an idea that transcends traditional roles and instead celebrates the families we create through empathy, resilience, and commitment.

Emotional Vulnerability and the Cost of Silence

Both AJ and McCabe are haunted by a shared past and personal traumas they have buried for the sake of appearances and survival.  Their reluctance to address the unresolved issues from their time in St.

Louis—particularly the fallout involving AJ’s abusive ex-husband—creates a tense emotional undercurrent that shapes their interactions.  The eventual unraveling of this history is not treated as a simple reveal but as an emotional reckoning.

McCabe’s anger about being traded stems not just from betrayal but from unacknowledged grief over missing his grandmother’s final moments.  AJ’s decision to stay silent, to protect him from legal threats by Chet, becomes a self-inflicted wound she’s carried alone.

Their healing only begins when they speak the truths they’ve long avoided.  Vulnerability here is not a romantic shortcut; it is the mechanism through which they begin to build something real.

Even their physical relationship, charged with eroticism, is not about conquest or release—it becomes an avenue through which emotional truths are expressed when words fail.  McCabe’s tenderness, AJ’s eventual admission of desire and fear, and their mutual caretaking all highlight how vulnerability can serve as a bridge rather than a weakness.

Their growth as a couple is not defined by the absence of fear but by the willingness to risk emotional exposure in order to find intimacy.

Rewriting the Narrative of Success and Legacy

The traditional markers of success—awards, promotions, championships—are all present in Cross Checked, but the narrative resists accepting them as the ultimate goal.  AJ’s pursuit of the GM of the Year title is steeped in symbolic value, yet when faced with public scrutiny over her relationship, she is willing to withdraw her nomination to maintain ethical clarity.

Her sense of legacy shifts from institutional acknowledgment to personal integrity.  Similarly, McCabe’s career trajectory is not bound to goals scored or contracts signed.

His contemplation of retirement, his willingness to forgo professional advancement in Nashville to stay near AJ and Abby, speaks to a deeper transformation.  For both characters, success is redefined by emotional courage and relational fulfillment.

The story refuses to pit professional ambition against personal happiness.  Instead, it suggests that legacy is not just what one builds in boardrooms or locker rooms, but in the lives one touches, the relationships one nurtures, and the values one refuses to compromise.

In the end, AJ’s award becomes not a validation of her conformity to the system, but a recognition of her defiance, strength, and vision.  Their love story, too, becomes part of that legacy—a declaration that vulnerability, authenticity, and love are not detours from ambition, but extensions of it.

Healing from Abuse and Reclaiming Self-Worth

AJ’s history with Chet casts a long shadow over the narrative, shaping her relationship dynamics, career choices, and internal monologue.  Her past with an emotionally abusive partner who manipulated her professionally, and who later resurfaces to threaten her present, is central to her guardedness and emotional distance.

What’s compelling is how the novel portrays AJ not as someone “broken” by her trauma, but as someone in active recovery—navigating fear, reclaiming agency, and reauthoring her own story.  Her silence about Chet’s threats wasn’t passivity but a strategic, albeit painful, choice made to protect McCabe.

However, this silence also speaks to the psychological residue of abuse: the tendency to carry burdens alone, to internalize responsibility, and to prioritize damage control over self-compassion.  McCabe’s presence challenges these patterns.

His unwavering respect, his emotional transparency, and his consistent affirmation create a safe space in which AJ begins to trust again.  Her eventual confrontation with Chet is not only a personal victory but a narrative shift from survival to empowerment.

By choosing to go public with the relationship and defend her own credibility, AJ reclaims a narrative once dictated by shame and manipulation.  Her healing is not complete, nor is it presented as linear.

But it is portrayed with nuance, honoring the messiness of recovery while celebrating the strength it takes to demand more—from oneself, from love, and from life.