Disclaimer: See main story.
Rated PG13
He walked to the back room, carefully keeping his shoulders erect. The blow that his sensibilities, his perceptions and his ego had just received was crushing, but he'd be damned if he'd let her see it. There was nothing dignified about what he had just seen but dignity was all he had left to fall back on.
In the small kitchen, he collapsed in a chair and drew a long breath that quivered in an unmanly fashion. Katie, his Katie, Katie O'Clare whom he'd cherished and respected, whom he'd courted and wooed with all the patience ever God gave to a man, his Katie - the very same who'd sent him home many a time so hard he thought he'd never be able to walk again - Katie, who looked like the gentry, an aristocrat who stepped out of the fine manor to join them - Katie.
Katie was a slut.
He squeezed his eyes, trying to shut out the memory of what he'd seen. What she had done with - what she had done to - that man. That dark lunking amadon with his evil tattoo and commanding eyes and his huge cock - no. Don't' think about that. Don't think about Katie's mouth on him, don't think about the look on her face when he slammed into her…
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He'd been so wrong about her. He'd thought she was a proper lady, and hadn't he treated her just that way? But no proper lady ever let a man do what that, that black demon did to her.
And she had smiled. She threw back her head and screamed with the sheer joy of it.
Katie was a slut.
And he had missed it.
All of it.
And now, he would never have a chance.
Never.
She would never look to him again.
Oh, and isn't it true, that God is as cruel as he is forgiving?
Michael Sullivan rose and went to the cupboard. There it was, on the shelf, in the back. The bottle of Irish he kept for himself, for those times when life was too painful to face without a bit of help. He poured a generous fingerful into a tumbler and raised it high. "Ah, Katie," he said. "If only I'd known."
The bite of the whiskey felt good against his pain. He let it settle in his stomach, then set the tumbler on the table. Katie was gone for good; she wouldn't be coming back.
"I wonder," he said out loud, "what our Maggie is doing tonight?"
Feedback? Please. I did not write this wonderful addition, but I will pass on any feedback received to the author, who wishes to remain anonymous. Shayenne