Fate Picked Me, the Alpha Passed, and I Felt Nothing novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Sign

He was at the shop door at six, with the sun just touching the roofs on Mill Street and his breath smoking in the cold.

I had been up since four.

I unlocked the door and pulled him in by the coat.

"Close your eyes," I said.

"Rue, it's six in the morning."

"Close them."

He closed them, and I led him through the dark shop, past the lathe and the bench, to the front bay.

I turned on the light.

"Open."

The front bay was empty.

I had pushed everything back to the walls the night before.

The big window was washed, the floor was swept.

The old plywood door that had hung in the frame since my grandfather was alive was lying on the boards.

Beside it, leaning against the wall, stood a new oak door.

It was six feet eight inches of quarter-sawn white oak, with a small brass plate and a plain black handle.

I had built it myself in October at night when I could not sleep.

On the wall above it, wrapped in brown paper, hung a flat sign.

"My father signed the deed over on Friday," I said. "He did it from Florida, by mail."

I held out the papers.

"I paid for it with my own loan. The building is mine."

He stared.

"The shop's mine. The roof's mine. The apartment's mine. Nobody can sell it out from under me, and nobody can raise the rent."

"Rue." His voice was thick. "That's."

"I know."

"I want to pay for the roof."

"No."

"The windows. The."

"No. Dray."

He stopped.

I stepped in close and put my hands on his chest.

"Everything in this building is mine," I said. "I want it to stay that way."

I kept my hands where they were.

"I'll take your love, and I'll take your help. But the roof is mine to pay for."

He swallowed, and nodded.

"Then what can I do?"

I pointed at the oak door.

"You can hang that."

His eyes went to it, and a slow dazed grin spread across his face.

"That's the door you picked."

"It's the door I picked."

"And I hang it, and nothing else."

"You hang it, and nothing else."

He laughed under his breath.

He took off his coat.

I handed him my mother's tool belt, the leather one, worn dark with forty years of hands.

His face changed when he took it.

"Rue."

"Put it on."

He buckled it around his hips.

It fit.

I stood in the doorway with a mug of coffee and watched Dray Wetherell, Alpha of the Notch pack, hang my door.

He knew how.

He had learned it from watching me, and he did it exactly right: chiseled the mortises, set the hinges, shimmed the gap along the jamb.

Checked it with a level, with his lip caught in his teeth.

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