Page 13 of Room Twenty: Owning Their Angel

Anger churns in my gut and I’m not sure if it’s about Heather leaving us without a backwards glance, Fleur being in danger, or just feeling like I can’t keep my feet underneath me right now. It’s almost too much, but I also know I can’t give up.

Not when giving into my desire to show Heather we were more, without then making her our everything, backfired right in my fucking face. That shit is on me.

“What the fuck do you mean someone is asking about Fleur? Don’t they know she’s un-fucking-touchable?” Gallows, one of the older members of the club who came up next to Lucifer, growls, “Do we know anything about this fucker?”

“No,” Prez’s voice is hard. “We don’t know shit. I’ve told you all I know. Gio will continue to work the ears he has in the city. We need to do the same and keep our eyes fucking open for anything that might be going down. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let any harm come to Fleur.”

The sound of everyone pounding on the table is almost deafening. It takes a few minutes for everyone to calm down and even though we don’t have any answers, there’s a feeling of being together to fight whatever comes our way in the room.

We don’t have to wait much longer for Lucifer to open the floor to the brothers and any new business. I clear my throat, suddenly nervous. Not because I’m not sure about what I’m about to do, but because it’s not as straightforward as I thought it would be months ago since Heather is gone now.

“We,” I point between myself, Scope, and Viper, “need to claim our old lady. Heather is ours.”

There’s a beat of silence in the room that lasts long enough for my stomach to drop and my heart to start pounding. Then, the men around me, my brothers, start hooting, hollering, and banging on the table again with wide grins on their faces.

Lucifer winks at me. “You’re finally bringing your claim to the table, huh, brothers?”

“It’s about fucking time,” Gallows grumbles.

I shouldn’t be shocked there aren’t more surprised faces around the table. I knew some of my brothers had an idea of what was going on, but I didn’t realize we were transparent to the point where everyone knew. Shit.

“I just see one problem with your claim,” Tack, the club’s Sergeant at Arms, speaks up. I give him a nod to indicate for him to keep going. “Heather left.”

“We know where she is. We’ve known since a few days after she ran,” Scope tells them. “We wanted to be able to claim her as ours together which couldn’t happen until I earned my patch, if I ever did. She is safe and Hack’s been keeping an eye on her as best he can.”

“You have your patch now, Scope,” Apostle’s voice is a challenge.

“Exactly, which means its time to stop fucking around and go get our woman,” Scope growls.

Tack eyes us curiously, “What if she doesn’t want to come back?”

Viper shrugs, his voice sounding a lot surer than what I’m feeling, “She’ll come back. We’ll figure out why she left and then we’ll bring her home. She belongs here with us as our old lady.”

“Well, shit,” Hacker mumbles, “guess I need to get her property cut ordered.”

I bark out a laugh along with my brothers. It helps to dissipate some of the tension swirling in my gut.

Lucifer rubs the underside of his jaw, his voice thoughtful, “It’s not common for a club angel to be claimed.”

My body goes rigid, and I clench my jaw to stop myself from saying something I shouldn’t to my Prez. “She was never an angel like the others, and you know it,” some of the anger I’m feeling leeches out through my voice, but all Prez does is smirk at me in response.

Instead of pushing me further, he looks around the table and asks, “Does anyone have any objections to their claim?’

No one says anything and my heart starts to pound in my chest so loud that I miss the rest of what he says. All I know is that when no one spoke up against the claim that she became ours, officially, in the eyes of the club. Now we can do what I’ve been dreaming about doing since I found out she left. It’s time to go to her and show her how much she means to us.

I might have to spank her ass red for running while I’m at it. But that’ll come after holding her in my arms and making sure she’s okay. I’ve fucking missed her, and I need her in my life and in my arms.

Hammer chuckles from across the table, a look of understanding on his face. “Is this why the two of you,” he points to Viper and me, “had us start on a house already?”

Scope turns to us with a look of surprise on his face. We didn’t tell him we were going to get the ball rolling on a house. It was one of the few things that has kept me fucking sane while Heather’s been gone and kept me looking toward the future. It’s not done yet, which is a shame, but I wasn’t going to wait until we got her back here.

From the look on Scope’s face, he’s not pleased to be left out of the plan, but I have a feeling he’ll get over it. It was all for her anyway.

Our club brothers give us some shit, but it doesn’t bother me. It makes me smile because knowing we have the club at our back makes me feel like I’m floating through the clouds. It’s surreal. The only bad thing in claiming our Cherub is that she’s not waiting out in the common room for us right now.

“When are you leaving to go and get your woman?” When I snap out of my fantasies of all the things I’m going to do with Heather when we go to her, Lucifer is looking at me with knowing in his eyes. “You better take some shit women like. You might not know what you did, but a woman doesn’t run for no reason.”

His words sink in, and it only makes me wonder, again, what happened before she left and why she did it without talking to us first. I’ve been over that day in my head so many times. It’s to the point now that I’m not sure if I can trust my own memories. Everything was fine and then she was gone.

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