Kings of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #1) - Caroline Peckham ,Susanne Valenti Page 0,154

mine and I gripped her tightly as she stared up at me in horror, begging me to make this news a lie with her eyes. But in all honestly, the reality of this situation was bad. Really fucking bad. Bad enough to make me consider grabbing a bag and running the fuck away from here for a moment before I realised that I couldn’t do that without abandoning her to the Night Keepers and every twisted plan they had for her. But the last I’d heard the death rate for people who caught this thing was around sixty percent. And those weren’t good odds at all.

“To be clear,” Brown continued. “That means that you are to stay where you are for forty eight hours. We need all of you to text your location to the admin office so that guards in protective gear can deliver food rations for you and whoever is with you. During this time you need to pay careful attention to your temperature and if you feel you are displaying any signs of the virus then you need to report it immediately. The CDC has announced that symptoms will present within forty eight hours of contact with an infected source, so this should be long enough for us to ensure that we all remain safe. Anyone found to be flouting the forty eight hour isolation rule will be instantly expelled and delivered into the care of the local police who will enforce your isolation outside of the school. During this time, you are advised to remain six feet away from anyone else around you and avoid physical contact at all costs. I will keep you updated of any further information that comes to light during this time and I thank you in advance for your cooperation.”

The announcement cut off and I was left standing beside Tatum Rivers as she clung to my hand and looked up at me like I might have some magical way to make this whole thing okay.

“What do we do?” she asked, biting down on her bottom lip.

“Simple,” I said, as I took in the fear that was dancing in her eyes. She needed me to help her banish that fear and I was willing to give it a shot. “We hang out here for two days having a slumber party. We don’t have any pillows for a pillow fight but I’m sure we can find a few secrets to swap while we do our mani pedis.”

Tatum laughed and I smirked at her for a long moment before releasing her hand. “Six feet back, remember?” I teased, but I meant it too. I needed to put a bit of distance between us anyway. Sharing this vendetta against Saint Memphis was making me think about her as more than just another student and I couldn’t let those boundaries blur too much. Especially as she just so happened to have pretty much every quality I tended to look for in a woman. Total badass, smart mouth, long blonde hair and a body…that I refused to look at. I was still her teacher. And she was still too young for me. Six years might not have been much in any other circumstance, but in this particular one it might as well have been fifty.

I could go to prison for doing any one of the things my body wanted to do with hers. And with the kind of money people like the ones who ran this school had, I might damn well rot away in there for the rest of my life.

Tatum nodded like she was a good little girl and backed away from me until we were following protocol and keeping six feet apart. It seemed pretty pointless now though. We’d just spent over an hour rolling around on the mats together so I was gonna guess that if either of us had it we’d already passed it on.

“C’mon,” I said, “Let’s see who else we’re stuck with for the next two days.”

Pearl Devickers and her little squad of stalkers had been using the gym equipment before we’d headed to the sparring room and I could only hope on all that was holy that they’d fucked off before now. Tolerating them during class was bad enough, let alone being stuck with them for two entire days.

Just be gone you pantie dropping perverts.

I was willing to guess that Pearl had a thing for fucking the staff because she seemed to believe that her money would get me