Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

mind’s eye, when one of his boys noticed it, Kaleb said,
Nothing, just a text from Ashleigh
. I liked picturing this happening. In a way it was as if I’d stolen a moment with him when I wasn’t supposed to.
    “I looked at it about a thousand times last night,” he said. “You really blew me away.” Exactly what I wanted.
    We drove in silence for a while, our hands wrapped around each other’s so tightly our palms were sweating. We filled a cooler with sodas and sandwiches, then stopped at his uncle’s house on the way to the lake to borrow his boat. We spent the day on the water, hanging out, soaking up sun, and swimming. I laid out across the front of the boat, and Kaleb stared at me in a way he never had before, and when we stopped in the shade of a secluded cove to eat lunch, our sandwiches and sodas grew warm as we kissed each other instead, our limbs tangled together, his hands searching around and under my bikini. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered into my hair. “You shouldn’t have sent me that picture.”
    I stopped, pulled back from him. “Why?”
    He grinned, then bent and kissed my collarbone. “Because it only made me want you all the more now. It’s not fair to show me something I can’t have.”
    I fake pouted. “Poor baby. But you can have this.” And I pulled him to me for a long, slow kiss.
    Afterward, he nuzzled his face into my neck and breathed deep, sprinkling kisses all down my shoulders and chest, right up to my bikini top. He rested his chin on my chest and gazed up at me with his intense eyes. “You don’t have to send me photos like that, Ashleigh. I want to be with you anyway.”
    I ran my fingers through his hair. “That’s exactly why I sent it, though,” I said. “I want to be with you, too. I wanted to show you that.”
    “Yeah, but what if it got out somehow? I’d have to kick the ass of every guy who laid eyes on it.”
    “It’s not going to get out. I only sent it to you. I didn’t even show it to Rachel or Von.”
    “Good,” he said, running his finger along my chin. “All that ass-kicking would be so exhausting, and I’d rather do this.” He pressed up against me and kissed me some more.
    By the time we headed home, my skin felt tight and sun-drenched, my hair stank of lake water, and my smile reached so far down inside me I felt like I’d never frown again.
    Kaleb had a baseball game to go to, but I didn’t even mind. When he wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me good-bye, I knew that his “boys” didn’t really matter. Soon they would go their separate ways and I wouldbe the one sticking around. I would be the one he remembered while he was away. I would be the one whose picture he’d be looking at.
    Mom was sitting in the den when I came in, frowning over her computer keyboard. She glanced up when I passed by, and pulled her glasses off.
    “Hey, stranger,” she said. “You home for the night?”
    I rerouted and slipped into the den, sinking into the puffy leather chair beside her desk.
    “That’s a cute dress. Vonnie’s?”
    I nodded. “Yeah. But it smells like the lake now. I should wash it before I give it back to her.”
    Mom smiled. “You have a good time with Kaleb?”
    I nodded again, hoping that how much of a good time wasn’t registering on my face. She’d have been disappointed to see me rolling around in a bikini with Kaleb, making out in a boat. What would she say about the photo if she knew about it? I couldn’t even imagine the lecture I’d get. She would totally freak. I made a mental note to erase the photo from my phone as soon as I got upstairs.
    “You look tired. Everything fine?”
    “Frog fur,” I answered. That was our thing. The way Mom had checked out my mental well-being since as far back as I could remember. It came from something her dad said a lot when she was growing up. If Grampy was having a great day, he’d proclaim he was “fine as frog fur!” If his day wasn’t going the way he