King's Promise. Adrianne Byrd

big daddy.”

      “You got it.” He waited a few seconds.

      “Zzzzzzz.”

      Quentin turned his angry gaze back toward Alyssa.

      She just frowned. “Big daddy?”

      “Drop it.”

      “Hmm?” Christina asked.

      “Nothing,” he hissed, and then stormed toward the bathroom. “I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy,” he repeated under his breath.

      “You might want to get a second opinion on that,” Alyssa said, following behind him. “Like maybe go back and see that nice Dr. Turner you were talking to last month.”

      Quentin groaned. “I don’t need a shrink. Thank you very much.”

      “And yet here I am,” she volleyed back.

      When they reached the bathroom door, Quentin stopped abruptly and looked back at her. “Do you mind? Can a guy get a little privacy?”

      “Sorry.” Alyssa folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “A few minutes ago you were all too willing to show me big daddy.”

      Quentin slammed the door in her face, but he could still hear her laughing on the other side. “Women! Even the imaginary ones were impossible to live with.” He shook his head as he relieved himself and even took a quick shower. By the time he had wiped away the steam from the mirror, he was reasonably sure that he’d pulled himself together.

      That is, until Alyssa leaned over his right shoulder.

      “Aaaaah!” He took his towel and covered the front of his chest like a damsel in distress.

      Alyssa jumped and screamed, too.

      Knock. Knock.

      “Quentin? Are you all right in there?” Christina asked, twisting the doorknob.

      Q finally clamped his mouth shut when he realized what the whole thing must have sounded like on the other side of the door. “Uh, yes! Never better.”

      There was a brief pause before Christina asked. “Why were you screaming?”

      “What? Uh…”

      Alyssa snickered and then immediately launched into a game of charades to help him out.

      “I saw…someone? No. Something?”

      Alyssa nodded.

      “Like what?” Christina asked.

      “I, uh…” He looked to Alyssa, who was running around the bathroom with her fingers in the shape of a V over her head.”

      “I don’t know. It looks like a rabbit—no? A what? What the hell is that?” he whispered to Alyssa.

      “A cockroach,” she answered, offended that he didn’t get it. “A cockroach!” he thundered. “That looked nothing like—”

      “You have roaches?” Christina asked, sounding disgusted.

      “No!” he snapped at the door.

      “You said—”

      “Forget what I said.” He glared back at Alyssa. “I, uh, just thought I saw a gray hair.”

      “Oh,” Christina said dubiously from the other side of the door.

      “A gray hair?” Alyssa challenged, frowning. “You’d freak out like that over a gray hair?”

      “Maybe.” Q rolled his eyes. “By the way, what happened to my privacy?”

      Alyssa shrugged. “I waited until you had finished showering.”

      “I don’t get this. How in the hell am I being haunted by someone who is still alive?” He headed toward the door.

      “Maybe that’s why you need to go back and see Dr. Turner.”

      “No! I’m not crazy!” Quentin snatched open the door.

      Christina, clutching the top silk sheet to her chest, asked suspiciously, “Who are you talking to in there?”

      “No one,” he answered too quickly.

      Christina peered over his shoulder and looked into the empty bathroom. “You know, uh, I really should be going. I, uh, have a very full day tomorrow.” She turned and started grabbing her clothes.

      “Wait. You don’t have to leave,” he said.

      “Don’t worry. I’ll call you later,” she said, moving like someone had struck a match to her behind. Less than two minutes later, she was dressed and racing out of the house with Q trying to catch up so that he could at least walk her to her car. But just as he reached the front door, it slammed in his face.

      At the top of the stairs, Alyssa folded her arms. “That went well.”

      The next day Quentin stretched out his six-foot-two frame across the black leather chaise, staring up at the ceiling in Dr. Julianne Turner’s downtown Atlanta office. Truth be told, he’d surprised himself by returning to the doctor’s office for another round of therapy, especially since he didn’t really believe that there was anything wrong with him.

      “Oh, there’s plenty wrong with you,” said Alyssa, his hallucinated sister-in-law/fantasy-lost-love from across the room. She wore that damn white wedding gown again today. Their marriage was a scab that everyone had hoped would heal over time, but so far—no dice. He’d been the one who his li’l Alice had a crush on. It was he who had first fallen for the li’l minx when she’d grown up to become a beautiful fashion model. It was Sterling who had discouraged Quentin from pursuing a relationship with her—since according to his brother she was like their younger sister—only to have him turn around and marry Alyssa himself.

      “I wish you’d put something else on,” Q mumbled under his breath to his mirage.

      “Like I have something to do with what I have on,” Alyssa said, throwing up her hands. “I’m not really here!”

      “What was that, Quentin?” Dr. Turner asked, sitting across from him in a straight-backed chair.

      “What? Nothing.” He shook his head at the doctor, who took great pains to hide her lush curves under large, unflattering clothes. The fact that she dressed so frumpy bothered him more than it should have. He didn’t understand why beautiful women did things like that. Didn’t they understand their power?

      Alyssa smirked. “Are you really sitting there thinking about having sex with your psychiatrist?”

      “Who said anything about having sex with my doctor?” Q snapped.

      “Excuse me?” Dr. Turner said, looking up from her notepad.

      “What? Nothing.” He glared at Alyssa, who shrugged her shoulders.

      All right, yes. Quentin knew that it wasn’t exactly normal to be seeing and talking to someone who wasn’t there. But as far as he could tell, it was just a coping mechanism until he could work through his conflicting emotions. So far, it was better than getting drunk and being pulverized in bar fights—which had actually been his first line of defense.

      Dr. Turner started scribbling in her yellow notepad. “You think today you’ll tell me who it is that you see and talk to?”

      He hesitated as Alyssa raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “I’m here because…I want to understand…”

      “Love?” the doctor suggested.

      Quentin bobbed his head while Alyssa shook hers.

      “That’s a tall order, Mr. Hinton,” Dr. Turner said, crossing her long, chocolate-brown legs, which continued to distract him. A connoisseur of women, Quentin had spent his entire adult life enjoying learning all there