The Only Road Out of Mercy

Ellery Boudreaux has poured drinks at her uncle's roadhouse her whole adult life and kept her body to herself for twenty-eight years. When Beau Thibodeaux rides back into Mercy as a Bayou Kings patch-holder, she knows exactly how the story ends. He spends crawfish season proving her wrong. On a hot June night she finally lets him upstairs — and he's gentle, and quiet, and she falls asleep believing she was worth the wait. By breakfast, a club brother has texted the entire parish a photo of Beau in a Lafayette motel room with the road captain's wife. Ellery packs one suitcase and takes the morning bus to New Orleans. She rents a room in Mid-City, works doubles in the Quarter, and enrolls at Delgado. Two months later Beau walks into her bar with the Lafayette motel's registration log, a police report, and a recorded confession from the road captain. He tells her he was going to turn the man in for running guns through the shrimp boats. Ellery believes him. Then she tells him the truth: she'll take weekends. The Kings can have the rest of his life.