“Do you cook?” Lucas asked, looking at Jude as he attempted to get the conversation moving again.
“Some. Nothing really fancy. My mana is determined to teach all her sons to cook and we’ve learned some things to varying degrees, but her cooking is still so much better.”
Andrei’s head lifted, his eyes widening. “You have brothers? How many?”
“Two. Both younger. Carrick is twenty-nine and Jordan is seventeen.”
“And you all live in the area?”
“Yeah. Carrick and I help our mana out with the bills and keeping an eye on Jordan. We get together at least every other week for dinner.”
Andrei smiled at Jude for a second before shaking his head, directing his gaze back down to his plate. “I can’t imagine what that’s like. I’m an only child.”
In the pause, Jude looked over at Lucas in expectation of him adding his own comment to the conversation, but Lucas didn’t move. Instead, Andrei spoke up, stunning Snow with his dark tone.
“Don’t bother,” Andrei practically snarled, his glare directed on the vegetables as he stabbed them with his fork. “They don’t talk about the past. They were hatched as adults.”
Snow looked at Lucas, but his friend didn’t meet his gaze. What was even more shocking was that he didn’t reach over to Andrei, touch him, soothe him in any way. During the time Lucas and Andrei had been together, this was the first time Snow had seen any kind of rift between them, and it only made him want to smack Lucas.
“Carrick and I are really close in age. I don’t have any memories of what it was like not to have one of my brothers around,” Jude ventured, trying to move them past the awkward moment.
Andrei snorted, his hand loosening just a little where he gripped his fork. “I couldn’t get away with shit. Plus we had bunica and tata mare living with us for a while. It was like there was always an adult there telling me what to do.”
Lucas paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, his brow furrowed in thought. “Grandmother and grandfather?”
“Very good.” Andrei smiled at Lucas and the last of the tension flowed out of him. Lucas actually sat up a little straighter, almost causing Snow to choke as he took a sip of his water.
“Are you learning Romanian?” Snow demanded, putting his glass down.
“I thought it would be useful.”
Snow just stared at his friend. “How’s it going?” he asked, trying not to sound as stunned as he was.
Lucas’s face turned dark and he glared down at his plate. Andrei reached over and placed his hand on Lucas’s wrist, his thumb rubbing over the top of his hand.
“I speak four damn languages fluently—one of them German—but I can’t get this,” Lucas grumbled.
“It just takes time. Romanian is different from what you know.”
Jude was quick to move the conversation along, seeming a little more at ease with Andrei since the two men had some common ground with both born of immigrant families. Jude explained that he was half Spanish from his father and that his mother was Greek—which explained him launching into the language at Southgate House.
Their easy banter didn’t completely mask the tension that hovered in the air. Snow was working hard to avoid Lucas’s piercing, questioning gaze. He knew what his life-long friend was thinking without him saying the words. Who is this man? What is he to you? Why is he at my table? What’s his place in your life?
But Snow couldn’t meet Lucas’s gaze because he didn’t know the answers to those questions. Jude…just made everything better. He could breathe when Jude was near him.
Dinner was over soon enough and they all worked to clear away the dishes, even though that just meant leaving them piled in the sink for Lucas’s cleaning lady, who would be stopping by at the end of the week.
Snow sighed as he settled on Lucas’s soft couch, knowing he had to come clean about the other place he and Jude had gone the night before. He wished Rowe was here, remembering a night not that long ago when the man had face-planted behind this couch in a rain of crab puffs. He’d been so worried Melissa would be pissed at him. Pain slashed through Snow’s heart. He’d give anything to have Melissa pissed at Rowe. At him. At all of them.
Anything.
A glass appeared in front of his face. He glanced up to find Lucas holding it out. “You look like you need this.” He frowned. “You also look like you have something to share.”
Snow shook his head. Damn Lucas and his sixth sense whenever it came to anything Snow. He waited while Andrei got a beer for Jude, waited until they were all settled in the comfortable living room. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t tell the cops everything about last night.”