He could love Emilio, he could even be loyal to the club, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever fit.
“Hey, this is Henri. He runs the little roadside pit near the fishery,” Aaron said, leaning forward to slap a handshake against Henri’s palm.
“What he’s actually saying,” said the biker who came up beside him, “is that he’s poaching him for our own financial gain.”
“And mine,” Henri said with a wink as he offered his hand to Jude. “Heard you were a rabbi.” His voice was low and rich, with a strong French accent.
Jude nodded as he drew his hand back. “I am. I just recently moved up here.”
“You at a synagogue?” Henri asked. He settled into a chair and grabbed one of the unopened bottles of beer sitting on the table, cracking the top with his palm.
“He’s taking a sabbatical,” Eliah answered for him.
Jude rolled his eyes. “Actually, I’m pursuing other interests at the moment.” He hesitated, then offered a small smile. “I just don’t know what they are yet.”
“Well, if you want to look into cooking, I’m the best fucking pitmaster you’re gonna find in five hundred miles, and after that, you’re gonna run into my brother,” Henri said.
Jude grinned. “Can I ask how the two of you got into American barbeque?”
Henri chuckled and shrugged one massive shoulder. “Obsession with American television cooking shows. And the lack of that sort of variety in Paris. We saved everything we had for five years, then we moved and started our truck. We’ve been here seven years now and never wanted to look back.”
Jude blinked, then laughed because while the idea of cooking had never even occurred to him, it had some appeal. Maybe not in the literal sense, but the idea of a full life shake-up—of finding something outside of running from his guilt over their childhood and his survival and trying to find answers in the divine. “Maybe a lesson or two couldn’t hurt.”
“If you cook anything like your brother, I have to agree,” Aaron muttered, then barked a laugh when Eliah smacked him on the arm.
The evening settled into something soft and warm. The food was good, Jude polishing off a full plate of chicken and sides, and he didn’t feel judged when he turned down the pork. And later, when he wandered off to the little patch of swamp beyond the fence, he heard shuffling steps behind him and turned to find Forge leaning heavy on his cane.
His gait was even more strained than Eliah’s. He used his hips to propel his leg forward, which Jude realized meant that it was missing from the very top. But he seemed comfortable in his own skin, his mouth set in a small smile as he propped his cane up against the fence and leaned on the top of it.
“Did you want some time to yourself?”
Jude’s mouth softened, and he shook his head. “Not at all. I was just admiring the view. Growing up, America was just like…Hollywood and New York to us. I mean, we heard the history of it all, but it was just sort of…” He shrugged and turned his gaze up to the canopy of trees, at the hanging Spanish moss, and the white wings of spring butterflies. “It was either big celebrities and the ocean or prairie lands and old west and danger.”
Forge’s brows rose high on his head. “Which one were you hoping for?”
“Probably the Old West gun fights,” Jude said with a laugh, his gaze roaming over a patch of lily pads. “When Eliah told me what he’d gotten himself involved in, I panicked. I was sure he wasn’t going to make it out alive. I thought,” he swallowed thickly, but he couldn’t make himself finish his sentence.
“But you stayed,” Forge pointed out. “You’re obviously not comfortable, but you stayed.”
Jude shrugged. “I’d been asking God for some time now to show me whether or not I was in the right place. I liked my life, but it didn’t”—he pressed his hand over his sternum and rubbed— “it didn’t offer me any contentment. I started on this path because I wanted answers.”
“Did you find them?” Forge asked.
Jude closed his eyes, but he couldn’t speak. Not yet.
After a beat, Forge took a breath. “I was prospecting for a club. My brother and a couple of his friends were patched in. He’s like fifteen years older than me, so it was kind of all I knew.” When he went quiet, Jude looked over at him. This close, he could see scars on the left side of his face and down his neck and patchy skin on his hand where it had been clearly sewn together. “We were never close. Ridge was pretty much estranged from my parents by the time I was born—and I didn’t really blame him, but he got me in. He probably figured the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“And did it?” Jude couldn’t help but ask.
Forge laughed. “I’m still not sure we even came from the same tree.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, then turned around to lean his back against the fence. “I still got into all that shit. I thought it was what I was supposed to do, you know? Shoot up whatever they gave me, fuck whatever landed in my lap that night, finish any errand they gave me.” He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “I figured if I hung on long enough, they’d eventually want me to stay.” Jude watched his hand drift to the brace at his waist that was holding his leg on.
Jude sucked in his breath. “Is that when…?”
Forge’s gaze followed Jude’s to where his hand was resting, and his mouth twisted in a half-smile. “We were on a run—this club was into some heavy shit. Trafficking drugs, weapons,” he shrugged. “People. It was raining, and”—he blew out a heavy puff of air—“I don’t think the guy in the truck saw me before he hit my bike. He pinned me between his truck and a semi. I was dragged for…god knows how long.” Forge’s head tipped down, his gaze on his boots. “I don’t remember much. I was in a coma for about two weeks. Came to with my entire fuckin’ leg gone, face all scraped up, half the skin on my arm missing. Ridge was there for a while—probably just waiting to see if I was gonna live or die. A couple weeks after I could stand on my own, and I wasn’t shaking too much from my withdrawals, the hospital gave me some shitty starter wheelchair and a fat bill and told me good luck.”
Jude squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about what life would have been like for Eliah if he’d been treated like he was not worth saving. When he looked back at Forge, his heart constricted at what he found. No bitterness, no anger. Just a sort of resignation to his own fate.
“I got back to my place only to find it locked up and all my shit in boxes. Couple of the other Enforcers were there, asking for my cut.” Forge tugged on the end of his, like an absent gesture, and Jude’s gaze settled on the patch that read Sgt-At-Arms. “I wasn’t any use to them if I couldn’t ride.”
“That’s bollocks,” Jude muttered.
Forge’s eyes lit up with his grin. “Yeah, it fuckin’ was. But I didn’t know what the fuck to do about it, so I just…left. There was this old church that took up a charity for me to get into rehab. It wasn’t half-bad, if you don’t mind the whole talkin’ in tongues shit. Tried to heal me a couple times, and I realized they really were waiting for God to grow my leg back or something.”