Page 58 of Knot Your Sugar Rush
I adjust, squint through the gap. A sleeve, grey with dust. The rise and fall is shallow. The sweetness of crushed petals hangsstubbornly 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. Donotpull 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.”
