Echoes 06

Chase groaned. "Shit. I never knew bad jokes were contagious. I hope I haven't infected you for life."

"Oh, you have, Chase Ventris. You really, really have."

She ripped off her camisole then and plastered her lips back on his, and Chase was off. He entered her easily, feeding his length bit-by-bit, waiting until the first groan into his mouth before slamming home all the way. They fucked then, not made love, starting their new state of affairs by filling a need that both had to get out of the way. In a repeat of their first time together all those years ago, the act was over quickly, marked by climaxes from each of them that were definitely louder than prudence would dictate.

Then they took their time, Chase using his fingers and mouth on her in that way he knew she relished, she showering the affection on him that he ached for. Their second joining that night lasted much, much longer, with the lovers luxuriating in each other for hours, affirming their rekindled love, cementing, once and for all, what they were to each other. The next morning, when Chase awoke with the woman he cherished in his arms, he knew, finally, that this was it. No more recriminations, no more second guesses. He was in it for good. He belonged to Isabella, and she belonged to him.

Life may have gotten them there through more insane twists than he could believe, but they were there, and he was happy again. He was happy again to make her happy again, and it worked.

__________

Most wouldn't think to describe a mundane, predictable life as being perfect and blissful, but for those to whom it had delivered more than their share of injustice and heartache, a staid, structured existence was heaven on earth.

Chase and Isabella never stood before and altar and exchanged vows. It never seemed right, and they both knew, even if they never said it out loud, that words were just words. They were husband and wife in every way that counted, because actions were what mattered, and boy did they ever act.

Their days were filled by with building a home, for them and for Chavelle, but their nights were reserved for each other, a celebration of love and lust both that you could set your watch by. Okay, maybe not just the nights. A quick fuck against the wall in the foyer when Belly met him at the door after work may have happened sometimes... or Chase eating her out behind the kitchen island while Chavelle did her homework... or Isabella giving him head under the blanket on the couch when they were only mostly sure that the girl was texting a friend in her bedroom...

All right, so a completely mundane, predictable life may not have been quite to their tastes, but close enough. Truly, the only fly in the ointment came with one realization, as the years ticked by, that Chase put off acknowledging as long as he could, until he finally had to own up to it in a dark moment with Isabella when Chavelle was a day away from going off to college.

They'd been talking about her and her plans to major in Linguistics, which led to a discussion about the young woman's athletic scholarship, which, inevitably, forced a joke about how utterly unlike any of the three adults involved in her upbringing the kid actually was.

"Daughter of three, and of none." Isabella smirked. "It has the feel of some pretentious play, or... Chase? What is it? You look like someone just caught you cheating on a test."

"Belly... God, I don't even know why I'm about to say this out loud." Chase couldn't look at her. "These last few weeks, as we've been getting ready for Chavelle to go, something's become clear to me." He took a breath. "As much as I love that girl, as much as I'm going to miss her like crazy, and as much as I know I'm gonna stare wistfully every day at the butt grove she's leaving behind on the couch... I don't think of her as my daughter." He closed his eyes. "I never did."

Isabella opened her mouth then, but was interrupted by an ebullient eighteen-year-old making her way past them on some errand. "Hey Grand, Stacey just found out that we're definitely slotted to room together." She smiled at Isabella, absently running her fingers through the short, athletic hairdo she favored, brushing away the few locks that hung at eyelevel. She paused then in front of Chase, hands on hips while affecting a stern look. "Mousetrap, try not to get too purvy about that. We're only going to be having naked pillow fights like... maybe three days a week."

A lifetime of habit kicked in and Chase snapped his fingers in an over-the-top show of defeat. "Well dang Muscle Girl; there goes the entire reason I'm even letting you leave the house. It's too bad, though. When I was in college, daily naked pillow fights were a thing of beauty."

Isabella's and Chavelle's identical snorts hit him in stereo, and the soon-to-be college girl raised a golden brow wryly. "I'll make sure to tell Stacey. We both know she'd be very, very interested in that story, even if your newly revealed sexuality will break her heart. I'm pretty sure her fantasies about you were the only reason she stayed my best friend all these years."

"I always knew that girl was nutty. A nice nutty, but tragically born without good sense." Chase's goofy, lopsided grin was probably about the millionth he'd given Chavelle. "Besides, she should have realized a long time ago that I'm hopelessly spoken for."

"Got that right." Chavelle smirked at him, patted him fondly on the head, and traipsed off to her last-minute preparations.

Alone with his woman once more, Chase's brief reprieve from his doldrums ended, and he ventured a look at his love, nerviously waiting for her to speak. Isabella, staring after Chavelle with a tremulous smile on her face, just stood and kissed him in the same spot that her grandchild had patted lovingly. "Chase, I can't believe I have to say this out loud... but you have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about, and that's the end of it. Full stop." She leaned down and put her lips to better use, then pulled back and grinned. "It's seriously not worth mentioning again, and was silly to even say once."

"But--"

"Nuh uh." She suddenly took his earlobe between her teeth, pulling it playfully. "She's going to be busy for at least another hour, and that new lounge chair out back needs some... stress testing."

Needing no further prompting, Chase scooped Isabella up and headed straight for the sliding glass door, ignoring her surprised squeak. "Okay, I think I know a spot where we won't get seen... right away." He shook his head. "Damn kid just can't stay in one spot..."

__________

Life echoing is no different than sound. What we put out there is what comes back to us again and again, and the instant we've loosed it, we've already lost control of what its inevitable return will look like.

__________

Chase and Isabella were just cuddling quietly on the couch when the knock at their door disturbed them. She yawned and stretched, rubbing the creeping sleep from her eyes. "Guess that's Chavelle." She looked at the clock. "Huh, she's a little early, but maybe she got out of her last classes quicker than she thought she would." She shook her head in mild disbelief. "End of her sophomore year already. I can hardly believe it."

Chase extracted himself from Belly, stretching as he got up. She was in her late sixties now, though you'd never know it by the firm ass he reluctantly lifted his palm from. He himself was bobbing around his mid-forties, so if it took a few extra seconds for him to limber up, he felt he could be forgiven. Dropping from five gym days a week to three may have been the culprit, though. Life was too good to waste too much of it getting sweaty.

He cast a look down at his still-devastatingly-gorgeous lover, silver hair and all. Well, depends on what kind of sweaty. "Her key's probably buried in her suitcase again." He shuffled to the door, a fond grin stretching his lips. "Kid never plans ahead."

The second he unlocked the door and turned the knob, the thing was flung open with a thunderous crash, and Chase found himself staring down the barrel of an old revolver.

"Motherfucker! We had a motherfucking deal! I kept up my end, you fucking piece of shit, so why did you have to go and ruin my life?"

The unadulterated hate hit Chase like a fist as he backed away with his hands raised. The man on the other end, fat, balding, and looking like a sack of hammered assholes, was a stranger... at first. Soon enough, though, it came horribly clear. "Holy shit. Shane?"

Apparently, fifteen years had come and gone without Chase or Isabella even noticing. He was out of prison, and he was not happy about any of it in the slightest. The frothing man had enough presence of mind to keep a good amount of distance between him and his target as he ranted. "You sent me to hell, you fuck, and now I have nothing. Except this." The man levelled the gun at Chase, and he knew that he was done.

The scream was nearly sub-audible, but the feel of Isabella slamming into him and knocking him to the side was all too real. The sound of the revolver being fired was very audible though. Just like the gurgling groan coming from the woman he loved.

Chase caught her before she hit the floor, but he knew it was already too late the second he saw her eyes. A feeling of hopelessness washed over him then, a wish for him to join his Belly, because he couldn't go through this for a second time. He didn't have it in him. He heard the frustrated snarl from Shane and knew his wish was about to come true, then yet another scream added to the nightmare, and Chase looked up in time to see Shane careen off a wall as something collided with him with incredible momentum.

Time froze as he watched Chavelle, newly come upon the sight of the people she loved the most in deadly peril, drop the suitcase-cum-bludgeon and scramble for Shane's fallen weapon. She got it with shaky fingers and pointed it at the man, her blue eyes locked onto his; the two sets of orbs looking like clones of each other in one final fucked-up twist.

"Give me the gun, you little cu--" Shane growled as he tried to lurch to his feet, and the revolver's issue was a hammer. It was a hammer, and the murderer was the nail. He clutched at his chest as he fell back, leaving a bloodstain on the wall and floor. Distantly, Chase thought, second time's the charm. It was dark and out of place, but he couldn't stop it. Then, the shitty life of Shane was gone, just like his ability to devastate Chase's.

Better late than never.

After that, it was a mix of mutual wails and heartrending sobs as Chase and Chavelle cradled Isabella's cooling body. They'd been wrenched back to hell again, and they had nothing then but each other.

__________

Chase and Chavelle were sitting at the table, poking listlessly at their meal after she'd come back from a run, when he sighed and looked up at her. This had been going on for nearly a year, this shuffling through their days; together, always, but still distant. Each unable to overcome the pain of losing Isabella. Chavelle had put college on hiatus, which Chase did truly appreciate, even if he knew that she didn't fully do it for his sake. She was broken too, and he was what she was stuck with.

Now though, it was time to man up. He couldn't let this girl's life be derailed before it began, and he needed to gently but firmly coax her back to the land of the living. "Hey, Muscle girl." His grin could have possibly seemed easy and confident, as long as she didn't look at it directly. "Tomorrow you should call your school. Get back on the roster for fall classes." He reached out and took her hand. "It's time. Grand would have wanted you to do what you need to, and not stay hung up on her. I'll be okay, don't worry about--"

"Yeah. I agree. It is time."

Chase thought it must have been a joke when the twenty-one-year-old blonde beauty left her chair, slid onto his lap, and pressed her lips to his. It had to have been--the crazy inappropriateness fit her sense of humor to a T, after all--but when she kept going, giving off little moans of satisfaction, running her hands through his hair, pressing her more-than-generous chest into his, and then probing his mouth with her tongue... Chase figured something else was going on.

With a gasp, and some real effort, he stopped the heart-attack-inducing make-out session and pulled his head back to look at her, eyes bursting with incredulity. "Wha... holy hell..." He licked his lips and searched for those things called words, before finally just blurting something out. "Chavelle, we can't do this! What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that recent statements constitute false testimony." She leered and ground herself down into him. "And I'm thinking I got some real proof here waiting to be submitted into evidence, Your Honor."

Chase laughed, then clamped his jaw shut. He mustered his willpower and stood up then, shaking his head, and dumped her down with a squawk onto her lycra-clad butt. "Chavelle, I don't know where this came from, but you can't be serious."

She looked up at him, perturbed brows lowered, and got to her feet. She crossed her arms over her tight, spandex sports bra and gave him a long look. "I can't?" Her chin went up defiantly. "Chase Ventris, I am head-over-heels in love with you, and have been since before I even knew what that meant."

Chase just stared at her, sure he'd gone nuts. Maybe he was the one that got shot, and all this was a fever dream from his hospital bed. His brain dying in a coma. That made more sense than that his dead wife's knock-out twenty-one-year-old daughter was declaring her love for his old ass. Anything else at all made more sense. Still, she did seem to really be there, confidently flipping his world upside down, so who the hell knew?

"Muscle Girl," he ignored her sudden grin, "I know we've never had the usual father-daughter relationship--"

She held up a hand. "Gonna stop you right there... Mousetrap. We've never had any father-daughter relationship, and we both know it, and I have been thankful for it every single day since I was five years old." She tilted her head, a mischievous grin tugging the corner of her mouth. "You really have no idea, do you? You don't realize how often I fantasized about being with you."

She glanced away, finally showing a bit of shyness. "Sure, at first it was a little kid crush. You know; I'm gonna marry Mousetrap someday 'cause he's so awesome. You were the first real man in my life, and it was inevitable. That kid crush didn't go away, though. That original brick in the palace of our love," boy did she obviously enjoy that cheesy metaphor, "got added to when you would take me out for our joint-birthday every year, always letting me choose where. More when you forced yourself to give me the attention I had to have to get over mom's death, even though you were hurting more than I was. Still more when you took the time to joke with my friends when I had sleepovers, and had them cracking up for hours... when you buckled down and turned your business into an international success... when you fucking walked around with nothing but trunks on to go to the pool, or came out of the bathroom with just a towel around your waist, or didn't keep your bedroom door as closed as you thought you did..."

Her cheeks reddened then. "When we were thirteen, and Stacey confessed to me her undying love for you, I actually wanted to slap her face. My first thought was; how dare you? Mousetrap is mine. I only eased up when it became apparent that you found her crush amusing in a way that you never found mine."

Chase blinked, brows raised. "That's because I never knew about yours!"

"Bullshit." Chavelle laughed. "You just brushed it off, which I understand. I was a kid still, and you aren't a sleazeball. Thank god." Her face grew clouded all of a sudden. "Besides, I knew where I was in the pecking order, and I never, in a million years, wanted to shove the woman you loved to the side. The woman we both loved. Still, when I was eighteen... I, um, kinda told Grand how I felt."

"Jesus. How long before she woke up after passing out?" Chase inadvertently laughed again, then kicked himself and cut it short.

Of course, Chavelle's loud snort picked up where he left off. "You really think she didn't know? Mousetrap, you might have been oblivious, well, no might about it, but she knew pretty much every time I spied on your sexcapades around the house. Around... in... behind... on top of... I mean, really, how did you not get a shingle up your ass that one time?"

"Who says I di... wait. You watched us?"

Chavelle threw her arms wide. "I couldn't wait to watch you, you fucking stud! How can I make this simple? You're not my dad, you're beyond hot, you're a freak like me, and you are the single greatest human being I have ever known."

She took a tentative step towards him, giving off the sense that she was trying to keep from spooking a skittish deer. "You are the man who, despite having every reason under the sun not to, still forgave my mother for fucking up beyond the ability to say in words, forgave my grandmother for causing the fuck up..."

At seeing his look of shock, she smiled sadly. "Me and Grand shared everything. She confessed it all to me years ago, and I forgave her too. Hell, technically, I owed her... no. Sorry. I didn't mean that." She put a hand on his arm. "Seriously, please ignore that. That was dumb, and I shouldn't have said it."

Chavelle took a deep, steadying breath. "Okay, getting to the point; how could I not fall in love with the one that gave me everything when he had a boatload of good reasons to give me nothing?"

She watched him for a bit as he started to speak, stopped, had an internal argument, then repeated the whole farcical routine. Finally, she giggled and cut in. "You'll find this hard to believe, but I'm telling the truth; me and Grand made a deal about you. She knew she didn't have all that much longer to be... you know... with you like you deserved." That focused him and he opened his mouth, but she plowed over him.

"C'mon, Mousetrap, don't deny it. Time grinds us all down, and she had a head start on you. She loved you unconditionally, and knew that I did too. That I do too. You made her into that person. Someone who had enough love to step aside and give a chance to someone who..." Her voice dropped then, her confidence draining rapidly. "...who needs you." Chavelle closed her mouth and watched him, suddenly vulnerable.

Someone needs you. Bizzy's last words to him. Did she have the slightest inkling that it would be her own daughter? Would she have cared?

Does it matter, really? Chase was wavering, and he could see that Chavelle was aware of it by the glint of hope in her eye, but this was still an incredible gulf to leap. "Muscle Girl, what will this look like? Everyone will think I've been... grooming you, or something. God, now I'm wondering if maybe I was and didn't know--"

Chavelle took the plunge and encircled his waist with her ropy arms, pressing her body against his once again. "If grooming means showing a displaced girl all the kindness, affection, and care that she could ever hope for, then screw it; you're the stable master and I'm one happy filly." She gave a scoffing chortle. "And fuck everyone."

Chase, finally, gave up the fight and conceded the best way he knew how, by grabbing Chavelle's delectable little derrière in both hands and waggling a sardonic brow at her. "That sounds exhausting."