“You!” He thundered. Lexi froze at the edge of the bed. She didn’t turn around to face him and he could barely see her side profile. He wasn’t worried about what she thought at the moment. He wasn’t done. He was going to have his say and no one was going to fucking stop him. “You threw a marble at my TV. What were you thinking? Who the hell even gave you such age inappropriate toys? Your little brother could ram that thing down his throat and never see the light of day again! Doesn’t your mother tell you not to break things? To respect her house? Do you also go around breaking shit at your own place?”
Of course, Noel had no answer. Her lips wobbled and fresh tears tracked down her cheeks. Austin had pretty much the same red faced, big eyed, about to start bawling look on his face, but his was tinged with a little more confusion.
He rammed a finger in Noel’s direction. Let the little monsters scream and carry on if that’s what they had to do. It wasn’t going to soften him. He wasn’t a sucker like his sister and her apparently ball-less husband.
“You think you can just walk around this house doing as you please? Making messes? Breaking things that people worked hard to afford? Breaking things that aren’t yours? You think you can show me and my house a lack of respect? I promise, you will never be coming back here.” He swiveled his finger in Austin’s direction. What do you know, those big tears started trailing down his chubby cheeks too, but to his credit, he managed not to make a sound. His sister more than made up for it, howling and gulping away. Curtis swallowed hard and said the first thing he could think of. The one thing he hated as a kid. The thing his mother used to say to him all the time. “You belong in a zoo. Both of you. You should go live there. You can break all the things you want. Smear as much poop all over the place as you desire. Act like little monkeys and wild animals until your little hearts are content.”
“The- the zoo…” Noel hiccupped, clearly mistaking everything he just said. She brightened considerably, swiping at her cheeks. Her lips stopped wobbling and she even produced a few clear sentences, proof that the hysterics really were just an act to get her off the hook. “Can we? Live at the zoo? I want to live at the zoo. I love the zoo!”
Curtis shook his head. It was after dinner and he was done with it all. He was done with watching kids, trying to keep them alive. He was even done with his plans to try and romance Lexi. She clearly wasn’t on his side. Maybe he should give up on what his dick so clearly wanted and actually use his brain for a change. There were a thousand willing women out there, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, fucking millions. He didn’t need to go after the one woman who so clearly despised him, even if, for the past year, she was the only one he wanted. It was an unhealthy fixation. One he planned to wean his junk off ASAfuckingP.
He stormed out of the room, shaking his head and muttering to himself. It was just about time for the kids to go to bed anyway. He’d gladly let Lexi deal with it. He could already hear her behind him, doing some form of unnecessary damage control, coddling the kids so that they’d never man up and take responsibility for their own actions. And people said his generation had problems. At least, he’d had a spanking or two over the course of a lifetime. At least, he knew not to break his parents’ things. He would have had his ass tanned red with a wooden spoon if he’d ever done anything like that to his mom or dad.
Curtis slammed his way into his room. He grabbed his laptop off the nightstand, where he usually kept it. He had an office that he’d very carefully locked up before the kids were dropped off, but he hated working in it. He’d rather answer copious amounts of work emails somewhere comfortable. He hated to admit it, but it was what he did late at night or early in the morning when he couldn’t sleep or couldn’t go back to sleep. Dealing with work shit wasn’t therapeutic, but at least, it eased some of his stress throughout the day.
Lexi probably never thought he answered any of his own emails, but that was because he cleared off the important shit before she even got to work for the day. Did she think that his emails stayed under control on the weekends by itself, when she wasn’t there to delete, flag, and send robotic sounding replies?