Page 38 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter thirty-eight

Cam

T he entire building groans around us, like something ancient deciding it’s had enough of holding together.

“Jamie!” The name tears from my throat as the world comes down in chunks—plaster, stone, wood—a rain of ruin that stings every inch of exposed skin. My eyes water instantly, the acrid dust clawing at my throat and forcing me to squint through the swirling haze.

“I’ve got you!” My voice comes out ragged, breaking on the edges.

His fingers twitch, faint but there, and relief punches the air from my lungs.

Behind me, Theo’s voice cuts through the chaos like a line tossed to someone drowning. “Cam, don’t let go. We’re coming to you.”

The building shivers again, the vibration buzzing up through my palms and knees. Somewhere above, something heavy shifts, and the sound is a warning in itself.

“Hold him!” Dane’s voice—hard, commanding, the one you listen to without thinking. “Cam, keep his arm steady. We’re coming to you.”

My pulse is in my ears, drowning out the rest. Jamie’s pulse flutters wildly under my thumb, too fast. I lean in close, letting my forehead rest near the rubble that hides his face. “You’re not going anywhere, Jamie. Do you hear me? Not on my watch.”

Another squeeze from his fingers—weaker.

No. Not weaker. I won’t believe that.

The smell of dust and old stone is thick enough to taste, gritty on my tongue.

Beneath it— him . And beneath that, faint but unmistakable, my own cinnamon-threaded heat curling upward like smoke from embers.

My body chooses the worst time to remind me it’s nearing that point again, every nerve straining toward him.

I shove it down. Now isn’t the time.

A chunk of ceiling gives way somewhere to my left, the crash rattling my teeth. Dane is suddenly beside me, his arm coming across my back, shielding me from a smaller spray of debris. The warmth of him, solid and unyielding, makes my chest ache.

“Stay low,” he says, steady but clipped. “We’ll get him out.”

Theo’s voice grunts from somewhere to my right, punctuated by the creak and snap of shifting wood. “The whole structure’s going—need more support—”

Dane leaps into action toward Theo. I tighten my grip on Jamie’s hand, my knuckles bone-white. His fingers are limp now, but warm. Still warm.

“Talk to me, Jamie,” I plead, my voice cracking. “Let me know you’re still in there.”

There’s no response, just the weight of his arm in my grasp.

And then, like some cruel echo, Zae’s face flashes in my mind—the day I couldn’t reach her in time, after her car was slammed into by a truck. The too-late. The empty.

Not again.

“Cam.” Dane’s voice brings me back. He’s crouched beside me again, one big hand over mine, reinforcing the grip like he’s transferring some of his strength straight into my bones.

His eyes lock on mine through the grit in the air, steady and unflinching.

“We’re going to move the beam pinning his leg on three.

You keep him steady, no matter what shifts. ”

I nod. It feels like my head is full of wet sand, but I nod.

“One,” he says, voice low. Theo’s already in place, wedged into a space I can barely see.

The whole building answers with a groan.

“Two.”

Dust rains harder, stinging my eyes. Jamie’s arm twitches. I grip harder.

“Three!”

The world lurches. The floor dips beneath me, the sound of straining wood and stone screaming through the space. The pressure on Jamie’s arm changes and I cry out—not in pain, but from the sheer terror of losing that connection.

I hold on with everything I have, muscles screaming, the tendons in my wrist burning.

Then another shudder, bigger than the last. Something in the far corner gives way with a crash that rattles my teeth. Dane’s voice is sharp, urgent. “Theo, brace—brace! It’s shifting too fast!”

“I’m trying—” Theo’s voice is strained, broken by the weight he’s holding back.

“Cam, don’t let go! ” Dane barks.

“As if I would!” My voice is feral now, my forehead pressed to the rubble, my body a shield.

The ground trembles again, and for a heartbeat I think we’ve lost. But then Jamie’s fingers twitch—so faint I almost imagine it—and I squeeze back hard enough to make my own hand ache. His face is agony, but I don’t look away.

“I’m right here,” I whisper. “You’re not alone. We’re going to get you out.”

The building doesn’t care. It keeps shifting, complaining, threatening to take him with it.

And then Dane’s voice, close again, fierce in my ear: “We’re going to try from another angle. Don’t lose him.”

I don’t even look up. “I won’t.”

The next moments are a blur of noise—grunts, crashes, the grinding sound of wood against stone, the groaning protest of a structure on the edge of collapse.

And through all of it, my fingers locked around his, my pulse in my ears, my mind clinging to one thought like a lifeline:

I am not letting go.