Read Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4) for Free Online

stomach as she watched his long strides bring him closer. Maybe every girl had that one crush, that one physical ideal she never shook, and for her, that was Aidan Teague.
                  Her eyes snapped to Erin. The sixteen-year-old cheer squad dropout was wearing an eighties-inspired rock getup, showing too much cleavage, leaving nothing to the imagination. Her face was damp with fresh tears, her makeup smudged, but Sam forced herself to look beyond that, and focus on the transgression.
                  She blocked the doorway with one hand braced on the opposite jamb. Erin ground to a halt and lifted her head, gaze wavering between defiant and heartbroken.
                  “Explain,” Sam prompted.
                  Erin chewed at her lip, fidgeted her hands together.
                  “All of it.”
                  She sighed. “Alright, fine. Fine. Jesse picked me up in front of the Coulson house–”
                  “After you snuck out the window.”
                  “Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “ Anyway , he picked me up, and we were supposed to go…” She bit her lip again, eyes dropping.
                  “Parking?” Sam asked.
                  “God, no one calls it ‘parking’ anymore.”
                  “Hooking up. Whatever,” she said firmly.
                  Erin rolled her eyes and pressed on. “Jesse said we were going to Hamilton House. Parker, and Adam, and Tyson were gonna be there.”
                  Sam’s brows shot up, anxiety spiking. Her sister had willingly gone where there would be a group of Jesse’s no-good friends? How had she not seen the terrible direction that could have gone?
                  “So we went,” Erin continued, “but then we got there, and there’s this other dude, who’s like, totally old.”
                  “How old?” Sam asked.
                  “Like…old as him.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Aidan, who rolled his eyes. “And he had all these bags, and they were drugs, or something, and Jesse gave him money and…it was just weird, okay? And I didn’t like it. So I told Jesse I wanted to leave.” She sucked in a deep, quivering breath, tears welling. “And he didn’t want to, and we argued. He told me I could walk, and he called me a bitch.”
                  Sam swore softly under her breath. “And you walked back into town?”
                  Erin nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “I was gonna use the phone at Stella’s.”
                  Over her sister’s trembling shoulders, Sam met Aidan’s eyes, sent him a grave, silent thank you.
                  “And now,” Erin said with a sniff, “Jesse probably won’t ever talk to me again.”
                  “Let’s hope so.” Sam stepped aside. “Tonight, we’re going to have a major conversation about how wrong all of this was, but right now, you’ve got to get to school. Go change, and be ready in ten minutes.”
                  “But my hair–”
                  “Ten minutes.”
                  Erin, for once, seemed to realize the gravity of the situation and ducked into the house without further argument.
                  When she was gone, Sam released a tired breath and deflated against the jamb. “God,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. The stress and worry had drawn her tight as a bowstring, and she ached all over. Then she looked at Aidan, shocked he was still here, very glad that he was.
                  “Thank you,” said. “I’ve been looking for her all morning. Thank you so much .”
                  He propped a foot on the cracked concrete of the back step and shrugged. “I figured you were going nuts