said. His fingers itched to pull out his phone and check on Eliah, but the last text he’d gotten was short and terse. He was fairly sure his brother wasn’t injured, but he was obviously scared, and it was setting off Jude’s need to protect him. “We just sit here on our damned hands until it gets dark?”
Kicks hiked himself up onto the back of the sofa and gave Jude a wry look. “Are priests allowed to swear?”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not a…” He stopped and dragged a hand down his face. “You know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Silence fell, and then the biker sighed and actually managed to look sorry. “I’m being a dick.”
Jude snorted. “I hope you don’t expect me to argue against that point.”
“No,” he answered, the side of his lip curling up a little. “I know you’re not a priest. And I know that rabbis aren’t the same thing.”
“We’re not, and I suppose swearing isn’t exactly something I should make a habit of, but it’s probably the least of my sins. My mother always said the yetzer ha-ra developed early in me.”
Kicks blinked at him. “The…what now?”
Jude chuckled, glancing around before he found a kitchen chair. He dragged it near the sofa, eased down, and let out a sigh. His thighs were still trembling from the long ride, and he wasn’t sure how well he was going to hold out for the final stretch.
“It’s sort of the…inherent will to do,” he shrugged with his hesitation, trying to find the words, “I don’t want to say evil because it’s not always that. More like…self-indulgence, at least when it comes to my own moral failings.”
“You think self-indulgence is bad?” Kicks asked.
Jude shrugged. “It can be. When it comes at the expense of others and ignoring the will of HaShem.” He picked at a thread on the side of his jeans, then shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of years trying to pay better attention to myself, but I’ve never been good at resisting temptation. No matter the consequence.”
He didn’t miss the way Kicks swallowed thickly. “What do you do about it?”
“Try to balance myself with the yetzer ha-tov.” He stopped, then smiled at himself. “To put first what I know is right and good. I might still be lacking a bit there.”
“So like, the devil and angel metaphor,” Kicks said, and he fluttered his fingers over his shoulders. “Whispering shit in your ear, seeing if you’re more inclined to be sinner or saint?”
“Something like that.” Jude smiled at him and realized he kind of liked this man in spite of the situation. He was at the very least nothing like he’d been expecting, and it set him more at ease than he thought he could be. “Suffice it to say, I won’t go to hell for saying damn.”
“Or fuck,” Kicks reminded him, jabbing the neck of his beer in Jude’s direction.
He rolled his eyes and leaned back a bit. “Or fuck. Or bloody fucking shitting hell. I got put in a week of detentions for that one during a maths lecture. But my professor was an absolute tit about everything I did, so it would have happened even if I’d tried to behave.”
Kicks stared, then burst into chuckles, and Jude marveled at the way the man laughed. He curled into himself and tried to muffle it, like he didn’t want the world to see that he was capable of letting go for a second. And Jude was suddenly overcome with a need to see him broken apart. To strip him down to nothing, until he was incapable of hiding himself.
The back of his neck burned with want, and he swallowed it down because this was the worst moment to be having those feelings and the worst man to be having them for. When he gained control of himself, he dragged a hand down his face and chanced a look at Kicks, who wasn’t laughing anymore, though his lips were still twisted up in a grin.
“Your brother as funny as you?”
Jude stared at him in some surprise. “You’ve not met him?”
“Just for a couple of seconds at the bar, but that was when Smokey was damn-near bleeding out, so we didn’t exactly have time to get to know each other. Shit has been really chaotic for the last couple months.” The tone of his voice wasn’t angry, but there was a fatigue and worry there that Jude didn’t like. Eliah had seemed confident over the phone that this was