Page 34 of Surviving in Everton

“Which one’s your favorite?” I hear Logan ask her. “I like that one over there with the orange mane and black body.” He points to the unicorn in question.

“Of course you do. That is such a boy’s unicorn,” she says with an eye roll. “I like that one with the white sparkly body and the rainbow mane. Obviously.” Violet shakes her head at him.

He just takes her sass good-naturedly.“Well yeah, I knew that. I was just making sure, gosh. You could have decided you like the pink one with the purple hair,” he sasses right back.

Quinn and I giggle at their back and forth. We’ve been at the unicorn enclosure for hours now. Thank god there’s a bench nearby so Quinn and I can sit while the kids examine every single unicorn the zoo has, and pester the zookeepers to find out everything they can about them.

“Okay guys, it’s getting late and it’s a long drive home. Let’s go pick up some pizza for our slumber party,” I declare.

“But Mommmmy,” Violet whines. “I don’t wanna leave!”

“I know you don’t, Bug, but we’ve been watching the unicorns for hours and the zoo is going to be closing soon. We’ll come back again soon. Next time, we’ll bring all of the guys with us and you can show them the unicorns, okay?”

“Ugh, I guess.” She sighs.

I shake my head at her dramatics. “Okay, if you don’t hurry up, I’m gonna let Logan pick the movie tonight,” I threaten her.

She snaps her head up at me. “You wouldn’t!” She gasps.

“Oh, I would. I’m sure Logan would pick something besidesFrozen,” I tease her.

She turns her stunned expression on Logan. “What movie would you pick?”

“Ummm, I don’t know. What are my options?” he asks.

“You can pick anything you want,” I start to tell him, but Violet interrupts me.

“You can pickFrozenorFrozen two.” She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, daring him to argue.

Logan just stares at her like she’s possibly lost her mind. I can’t help but laugh at the look on his face. This boy definitely doesn’t wanna watchFrozen.

“Alright you two, come on, you can continue this argument on the way to the car,” I tell them, and they do. They argue all the way to the car.

The drive home seems longer than the drive here. I wonder if it’s because the two angels in the back are still arguing about what movie to watch, because I’m suddenly starving, or because it’s somehow already gotten dark. I hate driving at night. I knew I should have made Violet leave the unicorns earlier. By the time we get home, they’ve stopped arguing about the movie. Both agreeing to disagree on the amazingness ofFrozen. Luckily there is no argument about what kind of pizza to get.

“Okay, Aunt Quinn is gonna get y’all settled in the living room while I order us some pizza. Behave, I’m sure there will be time to watch two movies. You’ll just have to take turns.”

By the time I enter the living room, they’re both spread out on the floor in the pillow fort they made and a movie is already playing. It seems they reached a compromise and finally agreed on something to watch. For the first time in as long as I can remember, we get to watch a movieotherthanFrozenfor movie night. Though after the day we had at the zoo,How to Train Your Dragon, was probably an easy decision.

We spend the night stuffing our faces in front of the tv, watchingHow to Train Your Dragononeandtwo. Logan is a big fan of Shirley Temples and unicorn poop cookies. This really was an amazing day. I only wish the guys were here to enjoy it with me.

Chapter 15

Hudson

It was a long drive to Forest Lake, but we’ve finally made it. West’s notes say Brad lives in one of the nice apartment buildings in town. Hopefully, it won’t be too hard to get in to see him. I figure that’s the best place to start, so I drive us straight there, park the car and turn to address the guys.

“Okay, remember the plan.” I glare at Nate. He just rolls his eyes so I go on. “Hopefully we have no problems getting in. I don’t know how fancy this place is, if it has security or not.”

“Damn, I didn’t think about that,” Ayden grumbles.

“Well, if we can’t get to him here, we’ll just go to the next place on the list,” Kayden reasons.

“We will, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” I agree.

“Okay, is this pow-wow over yet? Can we get a move on, please?” Nate huffs.

We don’t waste time agreeing, we just get out of the car and walk up to the front door. When we get inside, I’m happy to see there’s no security checking visitors in. We head straight to the elevator and ride up to his floor. When we finally reach his door I give it three hard knocks and we stand there waiting for it to open. When it doesn’t, Nate decides I didn’t knock well enough and gives it a try. If he’s home, there’s no way he didn’t hear Nate’s knock. It sounded like the police were breaking down the door. We stand there waiting for him to swing the door open, yelling about us knocking so loud, but it never happens. We all grow more and more agitated as the door remains closed.

---