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The barn responds with a sound I feel in the soles of my feet.

I freeze, one hand gripping a fractured beam. Somewhere overhead, rotten timbers shift before settling again with a shower of slate and dust.

It could cave again.

I know that.

I reanimate and reach for the next beam anyway. Keep scrabbling for the space where Dav sometimes steals a catnap after work, the bare corner of the barn now buried beneath oak, stone, and slate, every piece I shift revealing more of the roof section that was supposed to be safe.

The smoke is getting thicker.

The fire is closer and I feel like I’m trying to dig through the earth’s core.

I lift another length and toss it aside, but it’s one shunt too many and the perilous beams above me give way.

There’s no warning.

Only a violent, slicing blow to my ribs and back.

Bright light burns in my vision. I breathe through the pain as wet warmth—the bad kind—oozes down my side.

Fuck. I swipe at it, real panic seeping into my senses. Don’t stop. I can’t stop. I blink until the world steadies and fresh copper fills my mouth.

Then I keep digging, and I don’t stop until my battered hands find leather. Find Dav’s boot, and my heart lurches so hard I almost pass out. “Dav! Hang on. I’ve got you.”

I drag him out.

Miraculously, he’s not dead. He’s not even that hurt. Most of the blood on him is mine.

He doubles over, though, coughing and spitting dust onto trampled hay before blinking at me through smoke-reddened eyes.

His lips move.

I catch the basics.

You’re hurt.

He reaches for me.

But I step back, already wheeling away. Later. “We need to go.”

Dav nods and tests his left ankle. It wobbles, but he can walk. He can run, and I tow him outside. Jerk my head at the horizon.

Fire.

I sign it and I don’t know why. But it doesn’t matter. The smoke and the heat say everything I need. The world outside the barn that’s changed in the long minutes we were inside.

There’s no sky. It’s disappeared behind a thick grey haze. Ash falls heavily enough to settle on my skin and the air hangs hot and restless, pushed in sharp by the wind I carried Aras into just a few hours ago.

Aras.

Oscar.

I spin around, searching for the blue house in the gloom. Eventually, I see it, little more than a shadow through the smoke, but it does me no good. I can’t see Aras or his mum. Can’t see Oscar. I can barely see my own hand.

My mind tries to go to them anyway. But I wrench it back. Listen to my gut. We still have time. Oscar will have reached Aras by now. I don’t know how this ends, but I know he’d have got his son to safety as much as I know I should’ve told him I loved him tonight.

I should’ve told him before.