Page 37 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter thirty-seven

Dane

T he whole ruin is breathing wrong.

Every creak is a countdown. Every puff of dust is a warning. I plant my shoulder into a listing post and feel the weight of thirty rotten years lean back at me like a tired giant.

“Theo—wedge!” My voice comes out tight, clipped. He’s already there, jamming a splintered joist into the gap we just opened. The groan above us evens out to a low, steady complaint. Not good. Not catastrophic. Yet.

Cam is flat on her stomach in a slit of space where the ceiling came down, reaching in up to the elbow. Her knuckles are white around Jamie’s hand. “I’ve got him—he’s breathing—” she says, breath ragged through the dust.

“Good.” I cut a look at her. Her face is grey with grit and streaked tears, pupils blown wide.

We need leverage. We need a controlled release, or the whole back half of this wall comes down and takes us with it.

“Talk to me,” I call toward the rubble. “Jamie?” Nothing; then the faintest tap-tap through the debris—two beats. He heard me. Relief spikes fast and mean.

“Plan,” Theo rasps, eyes watering. He points with his chin. “This beam’s the fulcrum. If we brace left and lift here, we can crawl him out.”

I clock the angles in a glance. “That buys us a foot. Maybe enough.” I scan the ruin—rotted door, half a staircase, a run of handrail. Cribbing, lever, wedge. We can build something.

“Cam, don’t move,” I say. “Tight grip. Keep him grounded.”

She nods, swallowing hard. “He’s warm,” she says, voice breaking on the word. “His hand—he’s trying.”

“I know,” I whisper. The thought of Jamie crushed by a building, of never bantering with him again…I breathe hard and focus.

We move. Theo and I haul the old door over, lay it across two chunks of masonry, then wedge a third under the opposite end—makeshift sawhorses.

He hacks the banister into lengths with the camp saw, hands me two pieces, keeps two for himself.

I wedge mine under the sagging beam at alternating angles; he does the same on the far side.

Our eyes meet in the dust fog and we count with nods of our heads.

One, two, three...

We lean in. The ruin hisses through its teeth. The beam gives a fraction, then another. Stone shifts with the ugly scrape of old bones. Over the racket I hear Cam, low and fierce: “That’s it, Jamie—stay with me.”

The opening swells to the size of a bread loaf. “Stop,” I hiss. We ease pressure. Everything settles—not safe, but stable.

“Can you see him?” Theo asks, dropping to his knees beside Cam.

“Arm and shoulder,” she says. “He’s pinned at the ribs—maybe the hip. I can’t—” She sucks a breath that turns into a cough. “There’s a cross-beam across him.”

I adjust, squint through the gap. A sleeve, grey with dust. The rise and fall is shallow. The sweetness of crushed petals hangs stubbornly in the ruin, wrong and out of place, mixing with grit and rust and fear.

“Okay.” I scan what we’ve got. “We need a second lever on the cross-beam. Theo—swap with me. Cam, I’m going to lift. When I say, you slide this wedge under, just to hold the space. Do not pull him out. We go slow.”

Her eyes flash scared, stubborn. “I won’t pull. I’ll hold.”

We reset. Theo braces our first crib; I grab the pry bar I’d tossed in for “what if”—and thank every version of myself for being the kind of bastard who packs for disasters—and slid it beneath the cross-beam, find purchase, test the bite. The metal flexes. My shoulder burns.

“On me,” I say. “Three… two… one.”

We heave. The cross-beam lifts a quarter inch. “Now, Cam.”

She works the wedge in with trembling hands. “It’s in—it’s in.”

We lower. The wedge holds. Not much, but it’s there.

Another breath. Another plan. We repeat, leapfrogging the wedges, stealing centimeters from the ruin. Sweat stings my eyes; dust cakes the back of my throat. Cam’s shoulders shake with contained panic, but her grip never falters. Theo’s forearms are laced with grime, the tendons like cables.

A crack like a pistol shot snaps through the space. The wall to our right settles a hair. We all freeze.

“Don’t let go,” I say, voice low. To them. To the building. To the whole goddamn day.

Wind sneaks through a high break in the roof, stirring the dust into lazy spirals. For a second, I catch it: cinnamon and heat. Cam’s scent, richer than it was this morning, threaded under fear and grit. My jaw locks.

Not now. Focus.

“Again,” Theo says softly.

We go again.

The gap is the size of a dinner plate now. I wedge my fingers in and clear small stones out one by one, building a little cairn off to the side. Cam breathes with me, short, controlled bursts. “He squeezed,” she whispers, hoarse. “Twice.”

“Good man,” I mutter. “Keep it up, James.”

A sliver of his face appears—dust-streaked, lashes white with it.

His mouth moves. No sound makes it out. Theo strips off his bandana, dampens it with a splash from the canteen, and I reach in to press it to Jamie’s lips.

He takes water in two tiny swallows, coughs once, grimaces.

Alive. Anger and relief punch through me, twin and bright.

“Alright,” I say, more to myself than anyone. “We’re bringing you home.”

We need one more lift. Maybe two. The problem is the main load is still on the long beam overhead; we’ve been dancing around it, stealing clearance where we can. If it slides, the cross-beam will scissor down. We won’t have time to blink.

“Outside,” I say to Theo, jerking my chin toward the perimeter. “Do a quick loop. If there’s a clean breach we can make to take the load from the other side, we buy ourselves margin.”

He hesitates, eyes flicking to Cam, to me, to the ruin. He hates leaving us. So do I. But he nods, grabs the hand axe, and ghosts out through the ivy, light on his feet.

“Cam,” I murmur. “Talk to him.”

She leans in, voice soft and fierce, saying nothing words and everything words—little memories, promises she has no business making and no intention of breaking. “You still owe me a cinnamon loaf,” she tells him, and he huffs something that might be a laugh or a pain.

The ruin answers with a long, low creak.

“Dane,” Cam whispers, and in her eyes I see the edge of panic again.

“I’ve got you,” I say, and mean that too. “We’re okay. We’re okay.”

Theo returns, breath quick. “Found an outer buttress,” he says, dropping beside me. “Rotten as hell, but if we knock it free, this section will float a hair. We can slide him then.”

“Cost?” I ask.

He looks at the wall like he can see the math inside it. “It’ll shift. We get one clean move.”

One move. One try. I take it. “Do it.” He nods, quick on the broken floor.

“Ready,” he hisses loud enough for me to hear.

I nod, bracing myself. “On my count. Cam—when it frees, you pull his arm straight and keep his shoulder from catching. No yanking.”

“Okay,” she breathes.

“On three,” I say, locking the pry bar under the cross-beam. “One… two…”

Somewhere back in my head a quieter voice says: if this goes wrong, you throw your body over them and take what comes. Fine. So noted.

“Three.”

Theo’s axe bites into the outer strut with a dull, wet thunk-thunk-thunk. The ruin inhales—

—and the weight lifts, just enough. My bar gives another inch. The wedge skitters. “Now!”

Cam slides Jamie’s arm straight in one fluid motion. His shoulder stalks under the beam instead of catching. The cross-beam dips; the long beam complains; dust plumes like smoke.

“Hold—hold—” I grind. The leverage is slipping. My hands scream.

“Got him,” Cam gasps. “I’ve got him—”

We lose a hair; gain a hair. Theo is on the outside, bracing the load with his shoulder like a lunatic. I shove the last wedge home. The gap is wide enough now for a forearm, a shoulder, the narrow slope of a ribcage if we’re careful.

“Jamie,” I say, throat raw. “You with us?”

A rasp: “Would rather… be at a bakery.”

Cam chokes a laugh that’s half sob. “Of course you would.”

“Alright,” I say, and for the first time today I let a breath go all the way out. “We’re bringing you—”

The building answers with a sound I hate: a dry, cracking staccato that isn’t one beam, but many. A cascade. The cedar above us shifts a full inch, shedding a sheet of grit that powders Cam’s hair, my arms, Jamie’s pain-ridden face.

“Back,” Theo snaps from outside. “Back now —it’s sloughing from the top!”

“Don’t you dare let go,” I tell Cam.

“I’m not,” she fires back, eyes blazing behind the dust.

We freeze the world into three positions: my bar buried, Cam’s grip iron on Jamie, Theo holding a wall with his shoulder and sheer spite. A small stone clicks down the pile, then another. The ruin decides whether we live here or leave.

For a heartbeat, it holds.

Then something deep inside the structure pops like a tendon. The weight surges.

“Down!” I roar. I ride the bar, bleeding the load as it falls instead of letting it drop in a slam. The wedge groans, compresses, screams. Cam flattens, hugging Jamie’s arm to keep it from being sheared. Theo swears, a sound like tearing fabric, and the outside buttress gives with a thud.

We stop. Not safe. Not dead.

Dust hangs in the slanted light like a slow snowfall.

“Dane?” Cam’s voice is very small. “He’s mostly out. Just his leg is trapped now.”

I close my eyes for one half second. “Good.”

The ruin moans again, like it’s considering a second try.

“Okay,” I say, and my voice comes out as steady as I can make it. “New plan—” Before I can finish, the ruin takes offense and shifts again, a protesting shudder that rolls through the bones of the place and into ours. Jamie slides the length of a breath.

And then the ruin finds one more failing seam and lets us know about it.

A thunder of old plaster above. A rain of grit. The long beam lurches.

“Hold him!” I bark.

“I’ve got him!” Cam’s voice, bright with fear and fury.

The rest of it—the decision, the load path, whether my bar or the wedge gives first—vanishes into the same simple command I’ve been living by since the first crack:

Don’t let go.

The ruin answers with a rumble that says we have seconds, not minutes.

We do not have him clear.

And I have no idea if the next sound we hear will be daylight ripping in or the island swallowing us whole.