Chapter 12. A Booth of Her Own

Wade POV

I'd built a lot of things with my hands. Fences. Engines. A coffin, once, for a Larch Creek wolf whose family couldn't afford one.

I'd never built anything just to see someone smile.

The paint booth went up in the corner of the old machine shop over three days. Hook and I framed it, hung the plastic, and ran the exhaust fan out through the wall. Rae drew the plans on a napkin at breakfast, then on the back of an invoice, then on a sheet of graph paper she'd clearly been carrying around for years.

"You've designed this before," I said.

"Every night since I was nineteen." She didn't look up from the measurements. "It's for the shop I'm going to own someday. You're just getting the prototype."

She said it so matter-of-factly. The shop I'm goi