“Oh, God.” Malia leaned back in her chair and covered her face, spoke through splayed fingers. “We couldn’t have gone at the same time, obviously. But, Love Week. That’s our connection.”

“What, same church? Same retreat? Bare your soul for a week in Waycross and you wind up here?”

She lowered her hands, placed one on my knee and dug in with her nails. Those green eyes speared mine like skewers. “You’re acting awful damn cocky for someone who was just pleading for his life.”

Another bite of donut and this was the highest I’d been since I quit the band. “And you’re acting awful friendly for someone who was threatening to kill me.”

She relaxed her grip, but left her hand resting on my leg. “Fair enough,” she said, her eyes softened. “Although, that wasn’t actually me.”

“What, then? Multiple personality disorder, or bitch stunt double?”

That smile again, chock-full of charm. Dimples that could make you weak in the knees. Truth was, I was happy to let her talk. Considering what I’d been through, I wanted to stay in this break room with its little luxuries for the rest of the night, or day, or whatever side of the sun we were on. It beat the hell out of the drainage culvert or the inside of my son’s head.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m listening.”

Malia pulled her skirt down an inch and closed her top in her first show of modesty. “Actually, I didn’t go to the same camp you went to. The church camp, I mean.”

Great, another lie. I pressed my lips together to prevent anything sarcastic from slipping through. My mind was fizzing.

“Mine was with a rehab center for women – or girls, actually. We were all under eighteen. Spring Rivers Rehab Center, though we called it The Dam. As in a place that cuts you off from everything you know. Backs you up. Sucks your energy. Then releases you like a raging flood.”

Holy shit, I had forgotten about the Spring River chicks. A group of crooked girls shipped out to the wilderness to get straightened out. It had seemed so ridiculous, even then, to schedule their stay at the same time as ours – with a bunch of hormone-fueled boys being force-fed religion. Half the girls were there for acts of promiscuity, and, church retreat or not, all my fourteen-year-old bunkmates and I thought about was getting laid. It was our perfect temptation, and the ultimate form of corruption for girls who got off on breaking rules.