advantage with the opposite sex. They also shared the same skin that tanned and freckled the second the sun came out and the same naturally broad, muscular frames.
But despite sharing so many features with his siblings, Trent was different in other fundamental ways. Adam, Nick, Jace, and Liv all seemed to have such strong visions for their lives, such crystal-clear goals…even if sometimes those goals did change, like when Jace decided he didn’t want to be a hermit anymore and now had a wife and four puppies to keep him busy.
But they all knew what they wanted. They were ambitious. Sure of their positions in the world.
Trent, on the other hand, was a bit of a drifter. A wanderer. A go-with-the-flow-er. The idea of making too many decisions and locking himself into something permanent seemed…more trouble than it was worth. He knew what it was like to have everything you thought you knew suddenly crumble in your palms. He knew that certainty could be shaken and cracked open, like dry earth in the middle of an earthquake.
His siblings didn’t understand that. They were different than him.
Fundamentally.
“Careful,” Trent drawled, deciding to go with his most comfortable tactic and joke his way out of emotions he didn’t want to deal with. “The wind might change and you’ll be stuck with an uglier mug than you started with.”
Nick sighed. “You’re a lost cause, mate.”
“I’m enjoying life.” He gestured to the site around them. “New tools to play with, new shit to build. New mounds of dirt to conquer.”
“And new problems to be solved,” Nick grumbled. “Because we won’t be building anything today if these panes don’t come in soon. We’re supposed to be at lockup already.”
“You worry too much.” Trent folded his arms.
“And you don’t worry enough.” Nick was back looking at his phone again, his brain already skipping ahead to the next thing. Good. The deeper he got sucked into work, the less brain space he’d have to stick his nose into Trent’s business. “If this delivery doesn’t come in the next hour, I am going to lose it.”
“Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
But Nick was already walking away, head bowed as he tapped furiously at his phone. A second later, something vibrated in the depths of Trent’s utility shorts. He pulled his phone out to find a message from his brother with the link to the new architect’s website.
Maybe he’d take a closer look later. Or maybe he’d forget all about it and let Future Trent worry about where he was going to live when his sister returned.
…
Cora woke up around nine a.m., startled out of sleep by the sound of knocking against her window. For a minute she sat there, clutching the bedsheets to her chest. The knocking persisted. Liv’s house wasn’t exactly surrounded by people, which meant that if someone had approached the house and Trent was already at work…then she was totally alone.
Shit.
Knock. Knock, knock, knock.
Were the spiders big enough to knock here? It certainly sounded that way from all the urban legends she’d heard. What if they crept up to quiet houses and tapped on the window to lure unsuspecting victims to their venomous death?
Come out, come out wherever you are…
She shuddered. The knocking only got louder. Maybe it was a kid from a nearby house or someone who’d gotten lost on the road? She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and padded quietly to the window. She couldn’t see any shadowy figures through the gaps in the slatted blinds.
With a tentative hand, she reached for the lift cord.
“Come on,” she said to herself. “Don’t be such a chicken.”
She yanked on the blinds and was met with…nothing. Knock, knock, knock.
Her gaze dropped to the ground outside, where a rather indignant-looking cockatoo stared at her as if to say finally. If birds could cross their arms and stamp their feet, then Joe would absolutely have been doing that. Instead, he gave her the most epic side-eye of all time, then stomped off in the direction of the back door.
“Well, excuse me for sleeping in,” Cora muttered. The jetlag had hit her pretty hard, and she’d barely made it past nine p.m. before crashing faster than a toddler coming down from a sugar high.
She pulled her silky robe from the bench at the end of the bed and wrapped it around herself as she walked out of the bedroom and toward the back door, picking up her book along the way. When she opened the door,