busy when it’s open.”
Aaron’s mouth quirked behind his thick beard, and he shrugged. “Here’s hopin’. I’d like to lean a lot less on the shop, and this seemed like the way to do it.”
Jude’s gaze moved to the man at the grill who was now making his way over to the table. He had sunglasses perched on the top of his head, and now that Jude could see him properly, he saw tattoos covering his forearms and across his collarbones. He looked entirely like he belonged—in ways that Jude wondered if he ever would.
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