Page 59 of Knot Your Sugar Rush
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 wedgehome. 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. “Backnow—it’s sloughing from the top!”
“Don’t youdarelet 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.
