AN: Okay. So a few people expressed interest in me continuing this story so I decided why the heck not? So for clarification (although I'm pretty sure it will be fairly evident upon reading the first paragraph) this story takes place about six months or so after the season 4 finale. I kind of cop out (is that the saying I'm looking for?) with how all that works itself out, but let's just say it did. I decided to write this as a continuation to this story instead of starting another one because I'm using the backstory I created in the first chapter and expanding on it, and the 'penny for your thoughts' thing will come back up within the next few chapters. I did my best to make a feasible timeline for Jennifer and the original character I am adding to fit into what we know from the show, but just don't think about it too hard. Also, take note that I am changing the rating to T because there will be some violence. Hope you enjoy!

Duke and Jennifer walked hand in hand towards the coffee shop, shoulders bumping into each other, laughing at a joke that one of them had just made. Looking at them you would never guess that only a couple months ago both of them were teetering on the edge of life's precipice underneath a lighthouse. But that's a story for another time. For now, all you need to know is that Nathan, Vince, Dave, and a very weak Duke were able to fix it. The troubles were still around, Audrey was Audrey again, and William was nowhere to seen.

They continued to walk down the sidewalk, not far from their destination.

"All I'm saying is that just because he was a 'good guy', doesn't necessarily mean he was a good guy," Jennifer emphasized each word separately.

"He put his life in grave danger every day to protect the son of the woman he loved. A woman who, might I add, was killed by his boss, so it's not like he was doing it to impress her."

"He was doing it because he felt guilty! I'm not saying he had no reason to be angry, but that's no excuse to verbally and mentally abuse a bunch of eleven-year-old kids!"

Duke smiled and rolled his eyes. They were never going to agree with their opinions on Snape. To be honest, he kind of agreed with her. He just really enjoyed seeing her get all heated and passionate. Plus, Snape had always been one of his favorite characters so he felt a need to get at least slightly defensive.

"Look-," he began to argue his next point, only to feel his arm being pulled backwards. He turned around towards Jennifer, who had stopped walking and was staring at something in front of them. He took a step towards her and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Hey. What's wrong?"

"Hm?" Duke caught Jennifer's gaze. "Oh. Um. Nothing. I just don't really want coffee anymore. That's all. Let's just head back home and hang out until you have to go into the city." She started pulling him back in the direction of where they had parked.

"What?" Duke was genuinely confused. An hour ago she had been practically begging him to get dressed so she could get a latte.

"Duke, please." Her big, brown eyes looked straight into his. Scared and pleading with him.

Just as he was about to agree, another voice chimed in from behind him.

"Jenny?"

Every muscle in Jennifer's body tensed. Her grip on Duke's hand tightened. Her reaction put Duke into defensive mode as he turned towards the source of her discomfort. A man, slightly shorter than Duke but just as fit stood in front of them. Jennifer took a step towards the man, keeping her eyes downcast.

"Alec," she said blankly.

"C'mon. Is that anyway to greet an old friend?" He took a step forward and made a move as if to hug her. Jennifer took a step backwards to avoid his reach, which Duke took as an opportunity to get in between them.

He held his hand out. "Hi. I'm Duke. Jennifer's boyfriend."

"Alec." They shook hands, each grasping the other's a little too tightly. "An old friend of Jenny's from Boston." He turned back towards Jennifer. "I've actually been looking for you for a while now, Jen. Haven, Maine. How did you find this place, anyways?"

"What do you want, Alec?" She shook her hair out of her face and finally looked up at him, clinging on even more tightly onto Duke's arm.

"To talk. I miss you. I was hoping we could grab lunch?"

"No. Not gonna happen." Jennifer said quickly.

"Please, Jenny. Just a few minutes. Let's go into the coffee shop over there and I can buy you your favorite latte."

"She said 'no'," Duke interjected, taking another step between the two of them. "Besides. Now's a bad time. We were just headed home. It was nice meeting you, Alec. Hope you have a safe drive back to Boston." He wrapped his arm around Jennifer's shoulders and steered her back towards the car.

Alec called from behind them, "Oh, I'm not going anywhere just yet. See you around, Jenny!"

Jennifer flinched at the harshness in his voice and Duke tightened his grip on her. Once they got back to the truck, Duke opened her door for her before getting into the driver's seat. That's when he noticed how badly she was shaking. Her hands were so unsteady she couldn't even buckle her seatbelt.

He grabbed her hand and looked into her watery eyes. "Hey. You're safe now, okay?" She nodded as he took her seatbelt from her and clicked it into place. He placed his hand on her neck. "Do you want to talk about it?" There was still a lot about her past he didn't know. A lot she kept hidden from him or questions she evaded. He'd never really pressed it before.

She shook her head. "I just want to go home. I'll talk once we're there." She glanced into the rearview mirror and pulled her knees into her chest.

"Okay." He started the car and grabbed her hand.

The drive back to the Cape Rouge was silent. The violence in her shaking had decreased, but it hadn't completely subsided. He met her on her side of the car and they walked onto the boat together. Once inside he closed and locked the door behind them.

He led Jennifer to the couch, where they sat with his arm around her shoulders and her hands holding his in her lap. He turned slightly towards her and planted a kiss on the side of her head. Jennifer sighed and leaned into the safety of his embrace.

"Who was that?" Duke whispered the question into her hair.

"That was Alec. My ex."

Duke's mind flashed back to a conversation they had a few months earlier while sitting out on the bow of their boat. "The one who left when you were in the hospital?" She nodded as Duke remembered another portion of that conversation. "The one who abused you." He pulled her into his chest as she nodded again.

She had never really spoken of that time in her life. With anyone. Thinking back to it brought back memories of terror that she had tried to push from her mind. Now it had decided to push back.

"We met in a bar not long after my mom died. I was out with a couple of my girlfriends celebrating a birthday. I was never much of a partier and had never gone boy crazy while we were all in college, so when this really cute guy started flirting with me they bailed and left me alone with him. We really did hit if off right away though. He was sweet and funny and a gentleman that night. He walked me home, we exchanged numbers and he called me the next morning to set up a proper date. About six months after we started dating, he suggested that I move in with him so I could save some rent money and use it towards my student loans. For the first year or so we were really happy. I thought we were in love.

"Alec is a lawyer, and one day he got involved with a really big case that he just couldn't win. He had always been a really sore loser so that night he went to a bar and drank his feelings. He came home at a point where I couldn't understand what he was saying and he could barely stand up on his own. I managed to get him to our bed. Once there, he wanted to sleep together. But I had a long day working for the Globe and was just exhausted so I turned him down. In his drunken stupor he was not happy about that at all. I don't really know what happened. I just remember him slapping me across the face and yelling at me until he passed out.

"I was so shaken up by the entire thing. I slept on the couch that night. He didn't remember any of it until he saw the bruise the next morning. He said he felt really bad about it. Promised he'd never do it again, he'd pull back on the drinking. But, of course he didn't. Nothing changed. At first it was only when he was drunk, but then he realized that I obeyed him more often after he had hit me, so he started doing it when he was sober, and both of us got better at hiding the marks. By that point I was too embarrassed to leave him. I should have left after that first night. But I didn't and by then I just didn't know what to do."

Duke kissed the side of her head again. "But you did get out. And you're safe now. I'm going to make sure of that."

She gave a small laugh. "Yeah. I guess one good thing came from being troubled." She turned towards Duke and looked up at him. "Well, two."

He smiled her and leaned down to kiss her.

She was still grinning as she pulled away from his lips. Then she looked back down at their entwined fingers. "You know, for a while I thought something he did had caused the voices to start."

Duke sat up a little straighter. "How so?"

"He umm…" she shook her head to get the hair out of her face. "He got so angry one night he sent me to the hospital. I still can't remember what happened and I was too scared to ever ask him. I just remember waking up two days later in the ICU. I had a few broken ribs and a pretty bad concussion. I guess he told the doctors that I fell down the stairs, so I stuck with that story as well. It wasn't long after I was released from the hospital that the voices started. The doctors said it was schizophrenia and started me on antipsychotics, but I could never ignore the correlation between the two events."

Duke did his best to control the rage building inside him. He wanted more than anything to go find Alec and see how he liked waking up in the hospital after two days with no inkling as to how he got there.

"Anyways, that's all in the past. Now I'm here in Haven, the voices are gone, and I have found a pretty decent guy to date." Jennifer smiled up at Duke again, knowing she was safe while she was there in his arms.

"Pretty decent? Only pretty?"

She bit her bottom lip and nodded. "Yeah."

Duke smiled. "Yeah. You're probably right." He grabbed her under her knees and spun her to lay her on the couch. "Or did you mean pretty and decent as two separate adjectives? Because I'd have to agree with that assessment as well."

"Shut up and kiss me!" she laughed as he leaned in to do just that, showing her just how much she deserved to be loved. He placed one hand on her hip, the other entwined in her hair. Her hands made their way behind his neck, pulling him closer to her.

After a few minutes Jennifer's smile became too big that she couldn't control it and was no longer able to kiss him back. He settled for planting his lips anywhere else they could reach until she finally pushed him off her.

"Aren't you supposed to be on your way to Portland right about now?"

"I'll call and reschedule. I'm not leaving you until we know Alec is gone."

She sat up and he followed suit. "You don't have to do that Duke. I'll be fine. I'll just hang out here and read or something until you get back. Trust me, he's not going to look for me living on a boat. I doubt he'd try anything, anyways."

The text message alert sounded on Jennifer's phone and she stood up to read it. After a moment of digging around in her bag she finally uncovered her cell and began to read the message. Duke watched her face dropped as she read. He stood up and walked over to her.

"It's from Alec. I never changed my number after everything and I guess he still had it somewhere. He still wants to talk. Obviously that's not going to happen." She deleted the text message.

"Guy just doesn't know when to give up, does he?" Duke sighed in frustration with the man he barely knew, lifting his arm up to brush the hair that didn't quite fit in his ponytail out of his face.

At the same moment that Duke lifted his arm, Jennifer flinched, tensing every muscle in her body and turning away from it. Both realized what she was doing at the same moment. Duke slowly lowered his hand back down to his side as Jennifer began apologizing.

"Duke, I'm so sorry! I swear I didn't mean to do that! It's just, Alec being back just brought back all these memories and…"

Duke cautiously took a step towards her and slowly placed his hand on the side of her neck, thankful when she didn't pull away and visibly relaxed as he kissed her forehead. "It's okay," he whispered into her hair, before pulling away to look into her eyes. "I just want to make sure you know I will never hurt you."

She looked up at him. "I know." She lifted up on her toes to kiss him. "Now get to Portland before you miss your meeting."

"Are you sure you're going to be fine alone. I can still cancel."

"Right now, all I want is to take a long, hot shower and have some times to myself to think. Go. You can pick me up on when you get back and we'll go have dinner at the Gull."

Duke pushed her hair behind her ear. "Okay. But promise me that if you hear from him again you'll call Audrey or Nathan and hang around them until I get back?"

"Duke, I'll be fine!"

"I know. But promise me anyways."

"Fine. I promise."

"That's all I wanted to hear." He leaned down to kiss her again.

After a few moments she pushed him away, laughing. "Now get out of here!"

After he left, Jennifer made sure the door was locked and dead-bolted behind him, pulling on it to double and triple check. She took a deep breath and tried to shake the fear out of her head before heading towards the shower.