Updated Mar 22, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 1: The Mistake
POV: Rory
Rory – THE MISTAKE
Rory Castillo is three tequila shots past good judgment and approximately six shots past caring when the Swedish hockey player slides into the barstool next to her at Murphy’s Sports Bar with a smile that’s all confidence and zero subtlety, and she knows—absolutely knows—that tonight is going to end in a terrible decision that she’ll regret in the morning.
“You’re too pretty to be a puck bunny,” he says, and his accent does something unfair to the vowels that makes her stomach flip in a way she refuses to acknowledge as attraction because she swore off athletes two years ago when she signed the divorce papers and promised herself never again.
“I’m a journalist, asshole,” Rory says, turning to face him fully, and fuck, he’s even better looking up close—all sharp cheekbones and ice-blue eyes and that infuriating smirk that suggests he knows exactly how attractive he is. “You’re too Swedish to be this cocky.”
“Henrik,” he offers, extending a hand that’s large and calloused in a way that makes her think about what those hands could do, which is absolutely not a thought she should be having about a stranger in a bar, especially not a hockey player, especially not when she’s celebrating her new job covering the NHL and should be maintaining some semblance of professional distance from athletes in general.
“Rory,” she says, taking his hand, and the contact sends electricity up her arm that she blames entirely on the tequila and not at all on the way he’s looking at her like she’s the most interesting person in this crowded bar full of sports fans celebrating the Chicago Frost’s win over Detroit.
“Journalist,” Henrik repeats, and he hasn’t let go of her hand yet, his thumb brushing absently across her knuckles in a way that feels deliberate. “What do you write about?”
“Sports,” Rory says, because she’s drunk enough to be honest but not drunk enough to specify that she’s starting her new position at the Chicago Tribune covering hockey next week, because that feels like information that might complicate this interaction in ways she’s not prepared to handle while this intoxicated.
“Smart and beautiful,” Henrik says, and it should sound like a line—probably is a line, definitely something he’s used before on other women in other bars—but the way he says it makes Rory feel like he actually means it, like he’s seeing something in her that most people miss beneath the professional armor and the carefully maintained distance she keeps from everyone since Carlos destroyed her ability to trust athletes with her heart.
They talk for an hour, maybe two, time getting fuzzy around the edges in the way it does when you’re drunk and enjoying yourself and deliberately not thinking about consequences, and Rory learns that Henrik plays center for the Frost, that he’s been in Chicago for three years, that he has a cat named something Swedish she can’t pronounce, that he reads science fiction novels and thinks pineapple on pizza is a crime against humanity, and she tells him about her job in sports media (vague, no specifics), her best friend Margot who takes photos and gives brutally honest advice, her hatred of early morning practices and her love of perfectly executed plays, and somewhere between the third shared basket of fries and the moment when his knee brushes against hers under the bar and stays there, she decides that maybe—just maybe—she’s allowed to make one mistake.
“Want to get out of here?” Henrik asks, and his voice has gone low and rough in a way that makes it very clear what he’s asking, what this is, where this leads, and Rory should say no because she doesn’t do one-night stands, doesn’t sleep with athletes, doesn’t make decisions this monumentally stupid when she’s this drunk.
“Yes,” she says instead, and lets him pay their tab and lead her out into the Chicago night with his hand warm against the small of her back, and if a small voice in the back of her mind is screaming that this is a terrible idea, she drowns it out with the memory of his smile and the way he listened when she talked about the beauty of a perfectly executed power play like he actually understood what she meant.
His apartment is closer than hers—a high-rise in River North with floor-to-ceiling windows and the kind of expensive minimalist furniture that screams professional athlete salary—and Rory has approximately thirty seconds to register the tasteful decor and the impressive book collection before Henrik crowds her against the door and kisses her like he’s been thinking about it all night, and oh fuck, this is happening, this is really happening, and she’s going to let it happen because his mouth tastes like beer and lime and bad decisions that feel incredible in the moment.
“Last chance to change your mind,” Henrik murmurs against her lips, and there’s something almost gentle in the offer, like he’d actually stop if she asked, like this isn’t just about getting laid but about making sure she actually wants this.
“Stop talking,” Rory says, and pulls him back down into a kiss that’s all teeth and tongue and two years of sexual frustration finally finding an outlet, and Henrik responds with enthusiasm that would be flattering if she weren’t too busy trying to get his shirt off to properly appreciate it.
They make it to the bedroom in a trail of discarded clothing—her blouse somewhere near the living room, his jeans abandoned in the hallway, her bra hanging off a doorknob in a way that would be funny if she were sober enough to appreciate the comedy of this entire situation—and when Henrik lays her down on sheets that smell like expensive detergent and something distinctly masculine, Rory has a moment of perfect clarity where she thinks this is either the best or worst decision I’ve ever made, and then his mouth is on her neck and his hands are doing things that make thinking impossible, and she stops caring about consequences entirely.
The sex is phenomenal in the way that drunk sex with a near-stranger sometimes is when chemistry and attraction align perfectly—all heat and urgency and none of the emotional complications that come with actually knowing someone, with having a history, with caring about what comes after—and when Henrik moves inside her with the kind of athletic coordination that makes perfect sense given his profession, Rory thinks distantly that she could get addicted to this feeling, to being wanted this intensely by someone who doesn’t know about her divorce or her trust issues or the careful walls she’s built around anything resembling vulnerability.
“Fuck,” Henrik breathes against her shoulder when they’re both close, and his accent makes the profanity sound almost elegant, and Rory would laugh except she’s too busy falling apart beneath him, around him, coming so hard she sees stars and forgets momentarily why she ever swore off athletes in the first place.
After, they lie tangled together in the dark with their breathing still ragged and reality starting to creep back in around the edges of the alcohol-induced haze, and Rory knows she should leave, should get dressed and call an Uber and pretend this never happened, but Henrik’s arm is heavy and warm across her waist and she’s so tired, so pleasantly exhausted, and surely it won’t hurt to just close her eyes for a minute before facing the morning and whatever regret comes with it.
She wakes up to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and a headache that feels like divine punishment for every tequila shot she consumed last night, and it takes her approximately three seconds to remember where she is and what she did and who is currently sleeping next to her with his face buried in the pillow and his hair a complete disaster in a way that shouldn’t be attractive but absolutely is.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Rory extracts herself from the bed with the careful precision of someone trying not to wake a sleeping athlete who probably has morning practice and definitely doesn’t need the complication of the morning-after conversation any more than she does, and she finds her clothes scattered throughout the apartment like a very specific treasure hunt she absolutely does not have time for when she needs to get out of here before this gets awkward.
She’s pulling on her jeans in the living room—one leg in, hopping on the other foot, trying to maintain balance with a hangover that makes coordination a legitimate challenge—when Henrik appears in the bedroom doorway wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a confused expression that somehow makes him look more attractive than he did last night, which seems fundamentally unfair.
“Leaving?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice that might be disappointment or might be relief, hard to tell when they’re both clearly trying to navigate this morning-after situation with the grace of two people who absolutely did not think through the consequences before jumping into bed together.
“Yeah,” Rory says, finding her other shoe under the coffee table and wondering how it got there, deciding she doesn’t actually want to know. “This was… this was great. But it was a mistake. We both know it was a mistake.”
“Right,” Henrik says, and he’s nodding, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed in a way that makes his biceps do distracting things that Rory refuses to look at because she’s leaving, this is done, one-night stand complete and now they part ways like civilized adults who had drunk sex and are mature enough to acknowledge it shouldn’t happen again. “A mistake. Definitely.”
“So we just… forget this happened,” Rory suggests, pulling on her blouse and trying not to think about how Henrik’s hands had unbuttoned it last night with surprising dexterity for someone who’d consumed as much alcohol as he had. “Clean break. No numbers, no follow-up, just a fun night that stays in the past.”
“Agreed,” Henrik says, but he’s watching her with an intensity that makes her nervous, like he’s memorizing her face, like he’s not entirely convinced this is as forgettable as they’re both pretending it is. “Though for what it’s worth, you’re definitely not a mistake. Last night was incredible.”
“Yeah,” Rory admits, because honesty seems important when you’re establishing boundaries with someone you’ve seen naked and will presumably never see again. “It really was. But I don’t do this. Athletes, relationships, complications—I learned that lesson the hard way. So this was great, but it’s done.”
“Understood,” Henrik says, and he moves aside so she can pass him on the way to the door, but as she’s reaching for the handle he adds quietly, “I hope whoever hurt you realizes what an idiot he was.”
Rory freezes, turns to look at him standing there in his underwear with his hair still messy from sleep and sex and genuine concern in his expression, and feels something crack in her chest that she immediately patches over with sarcasm and distance because she cannot—absolutely cannot—let herself get attached to a one-night stand who’s sweet in the morning light.
“He does,” she says. “Now he just has to live with it.”
She leaves before Henrik can respond, before she can do something stupid like stay for coffee and conversation and let this turn into something more than it was supposed to be, and by the time she’s in an Uber heading back to her apartment across town, she’s already mentally filing last night under Mistakes I’ll Think About When I’m Drunk and Lonely and convinced herself that she’ll never see the Swedish hockey player again.
After all, Chicago is a big city.
What are the odds?
🔥
END CHAPTER 1
Reader Reactions