Believe in Me (Jett #1) by Amy Sparling Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s good that Keanna blew me off like she did. God knows I didn’t have the best of intentions in wanting to hang out with her. I kept picturing those soft lips, often curled into a smirk, and imagining what I would be like to kiss them, to run my fingers through her hair, feel her body pressing against mine, wanting more. They always want more.
    I’ve been called a great kisser more times than I can count. I know exactly what to do to make a girl’s body tremble beneath my touch. And I hope to God that I’ve never left any of them the way I saw Maria tonight. Dammit. Keanna made the right choice to deny my offer to hang out. She doesn’t exactly seem like the Emma Clarke no-strings-attached type of girl. And those are the only girls I can allow myself to mess around with.
    I wish things were different, but I know myself. Even if Keanna was interested enough to actually go out with me, I’d only end up hurting her in the long run. I’m not going to be that type of guy.

Chapter 9
     

     
    The walk to the motel feels a lot longer than I’d anticipated when I left the Parks’ house an hour ago. I remember the drive over as being only a few minutes, so I figured I was about four or five miles away. And given what I remember about the gym class I had suffered through in junior high, normally walking one mile takes about fifteen minutes. So shouldn’t I be four miles away by now?
    Maybe it’s because I’m doing more of a lazy saunter than a real walk, certainly not the powerwalking I’d done in that junior high class. With every passing minute, I hope Mom will listen to my voicemail message and come by to get me. She’ll want to stop me from spending money on a motel, especially money we don’t have in the form of a credit card.
    A car approaches in front of me, driving way too fast to be Mom looking around for me, but I look up just in case. It’s a black sports car and it doesn’t slow down at all as it zooms across the old asphalt county road.
    I sigh and kick at a piece of broken road, watching it bounce down a few feet. When I catch up to it, I kick it again and again until I end up at a red light in the middle of an intersection.
    I’m getting close. The motel is to the left, next to a brightly lit shopping center. It looks maybe half a mile away and I pick up the pace, no longer caring about wasting money. I need a shower and a nap. Walking several miles in flip flops is incredibly uncomfortable.
    The same cigar-smoking front desk guy greets me when I walk into the motel. Well, if you could call a bored grunt a greeting.
    “Didn’t you check out?” he says, flipping a page in the celebrity gossip magazine in front of him.
    I pull out the credit card from my back pocket. It has my name on it since I’m an authorized user on Mom’s account, so there’s no funny business here, not like the last time I’d stolen her debit card and tried to buy beer with it.
    “I’d like another night please.”
    “Sure thing,” he says, taking the card. I look around the dreary lobby, the stench of cigar smoke lingering heavy in the air. A little machine beeps and the guy grunts and swipes the card again. The second beep makes me nervous.
    “Card’s declined,” he says, dropping the plastic in front of me. “Got another one?”
    “Wha—” I begin, then I sigh. That card had a limit of twelve thousand dollars. There’s no way Mom’s spent it all in the last day. “Can you try it again? Maybe type in the numbers instead of swipe them?”
    He lifts an eyebrow and I want to tell him to stop looking so damn judgmental because since he runs a place so shitty that most of his clientele are probably way worse off than I am. Financially and otherwise.
    “Why the hell not,” he says, swiping the card again. It beeps. “I can try it all day kid, but it’s not going to work.”
    “I don’t suppose you’ll let me work off the cost of a night’s stay?” I ask, widening my eyes in hopes that they make me look