Her Vest, His Vow, the Other Woman's Lie

Tally Merrick is the only person the Cimarron Serpents trust to stitch them up after a border run, and she is the only woman in the Oklahoma Panhandle who has never taken a patch or a man. At thirty-one she still hasn't. When Hollis 'Doc' Pemberton returns from five years in Oklahoma DOC and takes the sergeant-at-arms seat, Tally recognizes him from a summer she's spent fifteen years not thinking about. Six weeks of wounds and chicken-fried steak later, she lets him take her to his trailer and gives him the only thing she's ever saved. She falls asleep easy. By morning, the Serpents' group chat has a photo: Doc in the clubhouse chapel with the road captain's old lady. Tally closes her kit and drives to Amarillo, where she takes a job at a walk-in clinic and enrolls part-time in nursing school. Ten months later, Doc walks in with a gunshot-wounded prospect, a security tape, and a written confession from the road captain. The photo was staged. The woman was a plant. Tally believes him — and then she makes him wait a year.