Kings of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #1) - Caroline Peckham ,Susanne Valenti Page 0,6

guy has a fan club. And I guess I’m hardly surprised.

I headed inside, the scent of cocoa and shea caressing my senses as I tugged my suitcase into the room. Two beds sat opposite one another and the whole place had been transformed by fairylights, rugs and mini cactuses. The unoccupied bed was piled high with clothes and I frowned as I looked to the girl sprawled out on the other bed in a crop top and red Nike shorts. She sat up in surprise, her large eyes scanning over me. She was model beautiful, her mahogany skin flawless and gleaming, her frame slim but rounded out by soft muscle and stupidly perfect boobs. Her hair was a tumble of hazel and her mouth was wide and currently hooked up into a smile.

“You’re the new chick?” she asked, leaping from her bed and darting across the room to the other one. She scooped all of her clothes off it and dumped them on the desk on her side of the room.

“Yeah, hey, I’m Tatum.” I offered her my hand but she came at me with a full on hug. The hand had been kinda weird anyway and I immediately warmed to her as she squeezed me tight.

“I’m Mila. I’ve been so fucking lonely in here, girl. You don’t even know. I need human contact.”

I laughed, dragging my suitcase across the room and lifting it onto the bed. “Well I’m kinda used to the quieter life so you’re gonna have to show me the ways of an extrovert.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, dropping down onto her bed and folding her legs up beneath her. She looked genuinely thrilled to have me here and it was kind of…nice.

I started telling her about how I’d moved around the whole country and by the time my suitcase was unpacked, I’d pretty much told her my life story. Not the dark parts, just the light. I wasn’t ready to open up about the shit in my past. But my days moving from town to town while Dad worked in labs all over the country was something I’d repeated a hundred times to a hundred people. Though maybe not in so much detail. I really did wanna make an effort here.

“So what’s your story?” I asked her, dropping onto my bed and shoving my backpack up by my pillow, overly aware of the weapon concealed within it. I couldn’t believe my dad had made me bring a gun. What did he expect to happen in a prissy boarding school for the sons and daughters of the elite?

“Well, my mom moved to the US from Pakistan when she fell in love with my dad while he was working out there. I’ve never actually been to Pakistan so I’m a New Yorker through and through. My parents sent me way out here to get ‘the best education available’,” she air quoted the words, putting on a stern voice and I laughed.

She grabbed a bar of chocolate from her nightstand, breaking off a piece for herself before tossing it to me without even asking. I smiled as I picked up the bar, snapping off a piece and popping it onto my tongue. This place wasn’t looking so bad after all.

“My dad wants me to get into Yale to study law.” She pulled a gormless face.

“You don’t wanna go?”

“If it was up to me, I’d be training to get in to Julliard on a dance major,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “But they’d never let me. That’s the way with parents right? Everything’s in our best interest. So long as it’s what they want us to do.”

I blew out a breath, nodding in agreement. “Yeah…I totally get that. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t have even come here. I would have stayed on the road with my dad.”

“That’s gotta be lonely though,” she pointed out. “I mean, I get it. That’s all you know. But have you seen this place? And girl, trust me, it’s worth staying here just for the guys. You wait until you meet Blake Bowman.”

I cracked a grin. “He showed me around actually.”

She slapped her bed with a wild laugh. “Cute right? Actually cute is like calling him ugly. He’s fucking hot. All three of them are.”

“Three of them?” I frowned.

“Yeah, him and his friends Saint and Kyan. They call themselves the Night Keepers,” she said ominously, glancing around her as if there was a sudden chill in the air. I almost felt