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“It’s the blonde cop, isn’t it?” Evi accused him with her typical bluntness. She narrowed her eyes, trying to read anything in his body language that would give her accusation a firmer ground. Typical Evi. He’d loved her once, a lifetime ago.
“It isn’t Audrey,” he replied firmly, refusing to give anything away. He knew this game, and even with so many years apart they both remembered every step. She was quick on her feet and even quicker with her words, and Duke knew that if he didn’t change the course it would turn into one of their legendary verbal sparring matches. Others might call it an argument, but to Duke it never quite came to that level between them.
“Then what is it, Duke? What has got you so trapped in this forsaken and messed up town?” Her words cut deeper than she realized, but Duke’s face gave nothing away. Haven may have its own unique set of issues, but it was his home regardless of how much he denied and resisted it; Haven was part of him.
There were so many answers to her question. There were dozens of reasons, and just as many people, that kept him grounded in the small coastal town, and she would use every single one of them against him if he told her the truth.
Duke would never admit it, but the Cape Rouge wasn’t exactly seaworthy any more. The Rouge had been his home since he won her on his twenty-first birthday, and she had taken him around the world and back, but in her older years she just wasn’t up to many journeys, even short ones. Nathan called her a rust bucket, but Duke refused to see her that way. She’d lived out a long life at sea, and now was retired in Haven’s harbor to live out her days. He had other boats he could take out, sure, but the Rouge was home. She had been his freedom, once, but abandoning her now was not an option in his mind. It was only right she would stay in Haven – after the last round of post-hurricane maintenance, he knew that the next trip out would likely be her last.
He also had a reputable business in Haven. Before the Grey Gull everything Duke owned in Haven floated in its harbor, but after a few years in town, Duke had the Gull keeping him honest (mostly) and his finances above board (the business finances, at least). It also kept him out of too much trouble with the law, though Nathan still hassled him about something or other a few times a week. The bar and restaurant was a fairly lucrative business as well, and there was nothing Duke liked more than money. Then there was the fact he got to use the many skills he’d learned while traveling. Nathan always described Duke as unreliable and flighty, but the truth was Duke got bored easily so he learned the things he couldn’t learn in school: he became a connoisseur of wines and whiskeys, fine foods and pricey ingredients were staples in his kitchen and he developed the skills to prepare them properly. Years of smuggling gave him the ability to read people and develop contacts that kept the Gull in supply of the things he couldn’t just pick up at the market in Haven. Being the owner of a bar didn’t give him quite the freedom he had in past years, but it gave him a way to keep his skills sharp. Evi would laugh at him if he told her, but it was just another reason he wasn’t ready to abandon Haven.
Bill and Meg McShaw were still in Haven – they were the closest thing he had left to family. Duke had always been closer to the McShaws than he had to his own brother, Wade, but they had been especially close after Jeff and Bill’s parents had passed away right after Duke came back to Haven. Losing Jeff the year before meant Duke and Bill were the only two Second Chancers left, and they needed one another to be that person who would always forgive them for fucking up and always give them another chance. When they were younger, Bill had been the one to bail him out of jail on more than one occasion, and then there was the memorable night they had ended up in the drunk tank together and Meg had to haul both their sorry asses home, but no matter what he did Bill was always there in Haven to forgive him. The years Duke had been away he’d gotten himself into a dozen different kinds of trouble, and while sometimes he had a cohort in with him (namely Evi), it was a bit harder to get out of trouble when there wasn’t anyone there to back him up unconditionally. His return to Haven meant he had that again, and it was a good feeling. Duke loved his freedom, but he missed the companionship that came with real friends who wouldn’t turn on him for a little extra pay. He wasn’t ready to give that up again.
Duke denied it to Evi, but Audrey was one of his reasons for not wanting to leave Haven. There wasn’t anything more than flirting and friendship between them, Audrey had seen to that, but still there was something that drew Duke to her. The first time he’d seen her in the water at the docks he thought he had seen a ghost: Lucy Ripley, returned in all her glory to haunt his sorry ass. He’d been both extremely wrong and dreadfully right in that moment – an FBI agent was not what he needed on his boat, but he needed to know who she was and what she was doing in Haven. After that, well she’d given him a hard time like he thought she would, but she also gave him a lot of leeway and was alright in his eyes. It didn’t hurt that she was attractive and the fact that she was friendly with him pissed Nathan off, so those were just added bonuses. Still, there was something about her and her immunity to the Troubles that kept Duke close to her. It was the same way he had felt about Lucy when he was a child; he knew deep in his soul that she was there to help Haven and that his purpose, whatever it was, was connected to her.
He could have told Evi that she had the wrong cop in her accusation, but that would give weight to whatever he had going on with Nathan. Their arrangement had lasted as long as it had because neither of them examined it too closely, neither of them admitted to any feelings beyond disappointment and indifference between them. That was entirely wrong, of course, but Duke wouldn’t admit it to anyone. He liked getting Nathan riled up about one thing or another, to the point where he couldn’t count the number of times their encounters began with heated words and flying fists and dissolved into frantic fucking. At the same time, they had just as many instances where words weren’t needed at all and they just fell together for mutual release or companionship. It wasn’t something they talked about, just like they never talked about the times Nathan showed up on the Rouge after a long day, or that time when the hurricane came through Haven and Duke stayed at Nathan’s apartment. Their arrangement worked better when they didn’t think too much about it or plan for anything, because between the two of them they would only ever disappoint the other if there was any expectation. Regardless of their past, Duke had always had a fondness for the detective and that hadn’t changed over the years. Duke took it as a sign he’d felt the draw to come back to Haven just days before Nathan’s Trouble activated, because Nathan had come to him that morning and not gone anywhere else. Whatever they were, whatever their past, Duke knew he and Nathan were meant to get through the Troubles together with Audrey’s help.
There were a lot of answers he could have given her, but he answered her question with the simplest of them all: his father. “My dad, the old bastard, he made me promise that if the Troubles returned, I would come back to Haven. He died before he could tell me why it was so important, but I fucking promised him and now here I am.”
He may have promised his father he would come back to Haven, but there was a much deeper pull that kept him there. It was something older, something more spiritual than just a promise, something that connected him, Nathan, and Audrey to this place and the Troubled people of the town. He didn’t know what it was, yet, but he was determined to figure it out. Little did he know that box was just the beginning.