Page 152 of Daddy's Pride

Rachel nodded, and let her tears fall then, her body wracked with sobs.

It almost killed Isla, seeing Rach so upset, but she knew that it was more than that, because Isla had salt trails down her own cheeks. It was the vulnerability of sharing this most dangerous of secrets—dangerous because love had the power to create or destroy. But the relief was almost as devastating as the rejection. She thought about all of the years they’d been friends, all those years when they could have been so much more to each other, and Isla almost felt like she was mourning the relationship that could have been.

But she wasn’t going to mourn this before it had even started.

So instead, she held Rachel in her arms and when Rach’s tears had subsided, she lifted her best friend’s chin and said, “I would like to kiss you now.”

“Yes please,” said Rachel.

Isla wasn’t going to rush this most important of first kisses. She cupped Rachel’s face in her hands, searching those trusting brown eyes, and then kissed Rachel as tenderly as she knew how.

Rachel’s response was tentative, as if she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening, and Isla held back, allowing herself to relish the softness of Rach’s lips, the plumpness of the face in her hands, the delicious miniscule inbreath when she came up for air.

“How was that?” she asked.

“Everything,” said Rachel. “It was everything.” She looked surprised, as if the importance of the kiss had bowled her over in some way.

It had bowled over Isla.

“There’s a line in a Shakespeare play,” she mused. “Something about the power of love being surprising.”

Isla knew it well. “‘I do love nothing in the world so well as you; is not that strange?’”

“Yes, that. I never truly understood what it meant until now.” She leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to Isla’s lips. “It’s you; it’s always been you. And that realization has been so sudden and so surprising, I don’t know how I didn’t realize before.”

“We know now,” said Isla, and vowed that she wouldn’t waste a single moment now that she did.

Chapter Nine

If Rachel had thought that moving to Brighton—whilst preparing to launch a new monthly kink event—was going to be difficult, well she might just have been wrong.

It should have been difficult, that was certain, but somehow everything had come together far speedier than she’d expected.

First, finding somewhere to live had been surprisingly easy. Cat, buoyed at the thought of having one of her best friends back in the seaside city, had put her feelers out amongst her extended queer family. The Queer Brighton Discord server had been all a flurry, and within a week Rachel had three different flats to look at—all of which had current tenants who could vouch for both the property, and the landlord’s non-dickishness.

The rental market being what it was, she went to visit each of them, and put in an offer immediately on a ground floor flat with an outside courtyard bigger than her living room in London. It was big and spacious, at least in comparison to where she’d been living for the past few years, and the rent was ever so slightly lower.

Packing was a horror, especially in between Zoom meetings with Cat and Tel about the Littles’ Market, and a surprising increase in workload at her day job. Isla even found her crying on the floor, surrounded by plants one Friday night; the next day her girlfriend cajoled half of the Stuffie Hospital London staff into coming to Rachel’s flat, and put them to work.

Rachel had been vaguely mortified, but Alex had sat her down, made her a cup of tea and reassured her that as bossy as Isla was being, none of them minded because “You’re such a lovely soul, and we really don’t mind helping.”

In some ways, Isla was just as protective and as helpful as she’d ever been. She was there whenever Rachel felt slightly overwhelmed, and she appeared to know exactly when ordering in food was a necessity. But she also held Rachel so much more.

They were tentative, the two of them, in this new development between them. Gentle kisses, and hand holding and lots and lots of cuddles.

Rach found herself somewhat disappointed. It would have been nice to have some more, to hold each other skin to skin, but Isla insisted on them taking it slow.

“You are my person, Rach,” she’d said. “I don’t want to mess it up.”

But she’d started using pet names. The first time Isla called Rach ‘babygirl’, she almost melted on the spot, and ‘good girl’ was being used with increasing frequency, to Rach’s absolute delight.

But it all came to a head when it came to organizing the physical move. Movers from London—even from out in the suburbs of Ealing—down to Brighton were expensive. Very expensive.

“It’s ridiculous,” Rachel said, digging into some particularly delicious dumplings that Isla had ordered in. “It’s almost as much as a month’s rent! Who can afford that? I was thinking that maybe I try and take some bits and pieces down myself; do some bits on the train, see if anyone would mind doing a day trip.”

Isla looked at her, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Moving all my stuff, Isla. It’s going to cost so much.”