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No, no they weren’t.

“Anything else? Or are we done here?” I asked.

His head tilted to the side, and I was struck momentarily stupid as I caught his gaze.

Sheriff Black Adkins wasn’t overly big.

A little over six feet, he was tall and broad in the shoulders and thick in the thighs.

He had salt-and-pepper hair that was more salt than pepper, and the greatest mustache known to man.

His eyes were blue like a huskie, and so damn sharp that it was hard to look him in the eye sometimes.

“Your brother, though he may be graduated, still needs to have an adult around. You’re the next of kin.”

I was already shaking my head before he’d finished his sentence.

“I don’t care,” I said simply. “He can rot in the system for all I care.”

Black stared at me like I’d just gutted him. Like I’d just thrown away something precious.

He had no clue that I was literally protecting my life.

“He’s your brother,” he stated. “He’s a child still.”

What he didn’t have to say was that he’d give anything to have his daughter back, and I was “throwing away” what I had with my brother.

Well, fuck Black.

He could have Leo for all I fucking cared.

“Then take him in yourself.” I shrugged. “I seriously don’t care what happens to him.”

Well, technically I did care.

I would care if he died, but only so I could celebrate.

“Jessamy…”

“If that’s all?”

Black gritted his teeth, his strong, square jaw working as he tried to control his anger.

“That’s all,” he said.

“Have a good day.” I paused. “And I’m not paying for them to get buried or anything either. You’ll have to figure that out on your own.”

Black called later that afternoon with an update on my brother—as if I would care.

He’d pulled some strings and got him into Camp Grizzly—an all-boys school where troubled youth went to set themselves straight.

In Leo’s case, Black had said, he wasn’t troubled so much as just needed somewhere to go.

That was where he’d be staying until he was eighteen and could take care of himself.

I felt no remorse for any of it.

I’d practically lived on my own since I was fourteen.