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I wiped my eyes. “Girl, you need help.”

“I need sleep!” She grabbed her phone, looked at the time, then slowly turned toward me. “Lakelyn.”

“What?”

“It is six-oh-three in the fucking morning. You better have a good-ass reason for waking me up.”

I pressed my lips together. “I do.”

“I’m talking about really good, because I was having a beautiful dream.”

I sat on the edge of her bed. “About what?”

Willow sighed dramatically. “I was on a yacht with a fine-ass millionaire. No shirt. No kids. No bills. Just me, him, and a plate of crab legs. And you woke me up right when he was about to tell me the PIN to his black card!”

I burst out laughing again. “Girl!”

“No! Now I gotta go back to sleep and find that nigga!”

“Willow, please! What I have to tell you is more serious than you losing access to imaginary rich-man money.”

Her face twisted, then she studied my face for a second, and the joking expression slowly disappeared.

“Okay. Talk.”

I took a breath.

“Okay.” I looked toward the bedroom door, then back at her. “Speaking of dreams... that’s actually what I came to talk to you about.”

She leaned back against the headboard. “Okay...”

I swallowed. “I think I had sex with Caspian last night or… or early this morning.”

Willow stared at me.

I stared back.

She blinked once. Then twice. Her eyes slowly dropped to the comforter like maybe the answers were hidden somewhere in the fabric.

“Okay.”

“Willow.”

“Maybe I’m still dreaming.”

“Willow, I’m serious.”

“And I heard you!” She pointed toward her ear. “Both of them work. Now, whether I believe the shit that came through them is another story. Because ain’t no fucking way I woke up out my yacht dream for you to tell me Caspian popped up after six years for a booty call, put it on you, then disappeared before breakfast.”

My mouth fell open. “I hadn’t even told you everything yet!”

Willow gave me a look. “Lakelyn, the fact that you started this story with, ‘I think I was dreaming,’ and the man is nowhere in this house right now is already enough to make me nervous.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something.” She sat up straighter and pointed at me. “You went to sleep alone, woke up talking about Caspian like he had been there, and now you’re sitting in my room looking confused and satisfied. I do not need the extended edition to know this story is about to be some bullshit. Then again…” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Maybe you weren’t dreaming. Maybe that nigga really is alive.”

I froze.