Page 78 of The Best Bad Decision

Any resolve I had left is well and truly shattered.

“I love you,” I whisper as he pulls me in. “I’ve been falling for you every single day since Singapore. I love you. I’ll love you forever.”

I feel his sharp intake of breath, the release of tension in his shoulders, the exhaled laughter as he sweeps me into his arms and off my feet.

“I love you, Amie,” he says, pressing the softest kiss to my lips. “I will love you every day until the sun burns out.”

He shows me just how much he loves me when we arrive back at his apartment. Tender, languid lovemaking replaces our usual urgency, and when he wraps me in his arms, sated and happy, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Where I’ve always belonged.

“How do we do this?” I whisper into the dark room.

“We just love. Everything else will work itself out.”

And so, we do.

It’ll be another few months of nightly phone calls and long distance before he can officially transfer to Boston and make the move to London. Even then, there will be times when we’re both away, missing Maisy and missing each other. But he gives me love, and he gives me faith—faith that everythingwillwork itself out.

I won’t be sneaking out tonight. What I felt for him in Singapore was real, but the way I’ve fallen over the last few months is even bigger. I’m done with running from Cam, from this—from us. Most people would call a one-night-stand with a stranger a bad decision. I let him buy me a drink—or four. I let him kiss me, I demanded that he takeme to his room and make me his. He got me pregnant, but I’m the one who left in the dark and maybethatwas my bad decision.

Either way, it gave me Maisy, and the path it put me on brought me right back to him. A bad decision? Maybe. But it’s the best one I’ve ever made.

forty

Epilogue (Amie)

Three weeks after Christmas,it’s back to business as usual. My face dances on the screen with a slight pixelated lag as I wait for Cam to answer my call. He’s in a hotel in Phoenix right now, having flown out from Boston early this morning for a layover before he crosses the Pacific to Japan tomorrow. I landed from a three-day tour around Europe this morning, around the same time Cam took off, and I’ve already completed two loads of laundry and coloured four dinosaur pictures with Maisy before my mum stopped by to take her swimming and give me a chance to catch my breath.

There’s a brief crackle on the line as Cam answers the call, and I feel my whole body relax as his face fills the screen. I miss him. We’ve been chasing each other around the world for the last week, with short bedtime calls between flights leaving Maisy upset and confused.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says with a smile. He looks tired, but happy, eyes heavy-lidded and dark green, and his shoulder moving at a lazy pace, rhythmically, almost like—

“Are you fucking your hand while you talk to me?” I ask with a soft smile. It’s worlds away from the first time I asked that question—exhausted, lonely, a breath away from a breakdown in a hotel room half a world away from everyone I love most.

“Yeah,” he admits. “It’s been a long day already, and I was just thinking about you. You and your ass in those pink gym shorts.” He tips his head back and closes his eyes, exposing the column of his throat and the faint, blue-green echo of the vein running alongside his Adam’s apple. That line I love to run my tongue over, sucking at his skin.

“Show me,” I demand. I tug the cable at the window and drop the living room blinds closed, dimming the early afternoon light. He drops his phone to the bed, angled just perfectly for me to see his cock in his fist, thick and glistening, already leaking from the tip. I shudder and my mouth waters. I remember the way he tastes. A low moan escapes my lips and I feel my underwear dampen as I push my sweatpants down over my hips.

“Thinking about me makes you hard, huh?” I take a seat on the edge of my sofa, slouched with my legs outstretched and spread open. This man has shown me a million times in a million ways the effect that I have on him, mentally, emotionally and physically. But it still brings me to my knees.Hestill brings me to my knees. There’s still a combined sense of awe and disbelief every time he tells me he loves me, every time he shows me how I make him feel.

“Oh, pretty girl, you have no idea,” he chuckles. A short, heavy exhale punctuates his laugh as he twists his wrist. “Does it make you wet?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Wanna see?”

“Show me, baby.”

I set my tablet down on the coffee table and place my feet up on either side of it. The camera points straight into my pussy and I swipea finger through my folds, holding it up in front of the lens to show the glistening wetness collected on my fingertip. Cam moans, gripping his cock tighter and increasing his pace.

“Fuck, baby,” he breathes. “You’re so fucking wet already.”

“Just thinking about the way you taste,” I say breathlessly, gasping as I touch a fingertip to my swollen clit. My veins flood with fire and ice all at once. “Remembering how it feels when you’re inside me.”

Cam’s throat bobs, eyes darkening even further. Another bead of liquid spills from his tip as he strokes himself faster.

“You feel me inside you now?” He asks. God, yes, I want to. I reach for my work bag beside the sofa and fumble around inside it until my fingers close around a small velvet pouch. I pull out my new toy: a lilac vibrator I can slip between my fingers. I bring it into view of the camera as I lay back, settling it on my fingers and brushing it around my entrance. He moans again as his eyes catch sight of what’s in my hand, and I touch my thumb to the button to begin the vibrations.

“Can you feel me, pretty girl?” It’s not a question anymore. “Can you feel my lips on your skin?” Another rumble of his voice. Warmth pools low in my belly, spreading throughout my limbs. I shudder as I tip my head back against the sofa, imagining his open-mouthed kisses along my jaw, down the line of my throat, in the hollow behind my earlobes.

“Ye—yesss,” I hiss, pushing the small toy between my folds. The silicone itself isn’t life-sized—not even close—but the vibration and the sensation filling my pussy are larger than life. Between it and Cam’s moans, and the memory of his cock inside me, pounding into me, I feel full. I feel beautiful. I feel invincible. I feel close to coming already.

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