“What sort of church wants you to give them all your money? Wants you to leave your home and live with them in the middle ofnowhere—?”
David got out of the car and slammed the door. With his army rucksack on his shoulder, he started walking down the road.
“Fucking hell,” I swore. I got out of the car and locked the doors. I ran down the street after my brother.
“Stop, David. I can’t keep up with you, you know I suck at running,” I wheezed.
He slowed a bit, but he didn’t stop. I was able to catch up with him just as he turned towards the road the led up the mountain. I grabbed his arm. “Dude, seriously, just stop for a minute.”
David wrenched his arm from my grasp. “I need this, Baz. Don’t you see that? If I don’t do this, I’lldie.” His voice broke and something in me did the same.
“That’s being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” I tried to make light of his very serious words. I wanted him to laugh and tell me he was being a diva and to head home. I waited illogically for him to tell me this was all a joke.
But he didn’t.
Instead he started to cry.
David never cried. Not when he was eight years old and got his finger caught in the car door and the tip fell off. Not when he was sixteen and his first girlfriend, Marisa Tomans—and apparent “love of his life”—dumped him for his buddy, Jack.
And not when he was discharged from the army after he watched most of his platoon get blown to bits in front of him.
But he cried now. Deep, wretched sobs that came from the marrow.
I didn’t know what the hell to do.
“I can’t keep going like this, Bastian. I’ve tried for Mom and Dad. I’ve tried for you. But if I don’t change my life, I won’t have one. I need to do something that matters. Something that has a purpose. I’ve lost fucking everything.Everything!” He finally stopped walking and covered his face with his hands.
I put my arm around him, hugging him as much as he’d let me. “We’ll make this better—”
“No.Iwill make this better. And this is how I am going to do it,” David interrupted, pulling away. “Don’t stop me. I don’t want to say goodbye with my fist in your face.”
It was the first time in months he sounded anything like himself. And for that reason, I shut up and followed him up that goddamned mountain.
Pastor Carter wasn’t quite the evil villain I pictured him to be, but he wasn’t the savior David depicted him either. There was something smarmy and not quite right about the way his eyes drifted over the pretty girl who waited with him at the gate.
Sara.
She looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie in an obviously handmade dress and hair that hadn’t seen a comb in too long. Her eyes were strange. Oddly colored but with an intensity that was both unnerving and sort of hot.
She spoke like a fucking drone, going on about God’s way and shit. But it was her insistence that made Pastor Carter open the gate and let me in.
I wasn’t sure why she did it.
But I knew why I had to stay.
I couldn’t leave David here with this man.
My guts twisted.
The Retreat feltwrong.
Only hours after we arrived, Pastor Carter very kindly informed me that I would be required to give a ‘donation’ to my new family.
He spread out his hands modestly. “The Retreat requires a lot of upkeep. God’s work isn’t cheap. And you can’t put a price on salvation, can you?”
Fucking asshole.
“I don’t have any money,” I told him, trying like hell not to deck the dude. It was obvious he was nothing more than a con artist. How did all these people not see that? Why didn’t they question when he told them to hand over their money? Their possessions?
