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He’d assigned me the task of taking minutes during the meeting. It was the least offensive thing he could’ve asked me to do, so I didn’t mind. I felt sorrier for the players who had to help him set up the decor. “Over the top” didn’t begin to describe it.

There were dinosaur balloons. Dinosaur candles. Dinosaur cookies, gummy bears, and water bottles with custom labels. It looked like a five-year-old’s birthday party gone wild except for the enormous, wall-sized poster featuring a blown-up image of the racy book cover. Photoshopped pictures of every team member reading the book lined the bottom of the poster, right beneath the claw clutching the female model’s bare leg.

“Jesus.” Asher looked around, his expression stunned. “I have no words.”

I shook my head. I’d given up on making sense of Adil’s eccentricities long ago. It was easier to go along with his plans than to fight them.

At least my role as notetaker took my mind off Carina. As long as I didn’t focus on the dinosaurs (which I now apparently associated with her), I was in the clear.

However, the group’s good-faith effort to hold a serious discussion about the arranged marriage trope between dinosaurs and humans soon descended into arguments and chaos. Per usual, Adil tried and failed to restore order several times before he finally gave up.

“How long did we last this time?” He plopped next to me in the back of the room, his expression defeated.

“Nine minutes, twenty seconds. It’s a new record.” I’d stopped taking notes the second Stevens asked about dinosaur divorce rates.

“Well, cheers to that.” When I didn’t respond, Adil cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong? You’re moodier than usual.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Liar. You’re not scowling like you usually do. Your face is, like, blank.” He waved a hand over his own face in demonstration. “Are you still mad at me about the Konnect thing? Because Gallagher was totally the one who took it too far.”

“Unless you reactivated my profile, no, I’m not mad.”

“Good.” He went quiet. When he spoke again, his expression was uncharacteristically serious. “I know you think I’m annoying. Maybe I am. But I really meant well with the dating profile.”

I dragged my eyes away from Gallagher’s efforts to draw devil horns on every player on the poster. I stared at Adil, genuinely surprised. “I don’t think you’re annoying.”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“You do annoying things sometimes,” I amended. “But I don’t think you, as a person, are annoying. Like you said, you mean well.”

Despite my grumbles and endless attempts to remove myself from the Blackcastle group chat, I did value Adil’s friendship. Sure, he was nosy and often overstepped boundaries, but he was also a good teammate and a loyal friend. I’d rather surround myself with people who wore their intentions openly than those who quietly plotted against you.

He perked up again at my response. “Good! In that case, I must take it upon myself to inform you that we worry about you. Even Gallagher. He has stupid ideas, but he tried sending those messages because he knew you wouldn’t do it yourself. Not that we think you need a relationship or whatever to fulfill you, but aren’t you…” Adil hesitated, as if searching for the right word. “Lonely?”

My chest tightened.

I wasn’t lonely in the strictest sense. I had Evie, and I was surrounded by people all day. I could walk into any pub in London and find a dozen drinking partners.

But I didn’t have anyone to talk to at the end of the day. No one to lie next to at night and share the small, quiet moments with. When life stopped making sense, I had no one to turn to except myself.

Was that considered lonely? Maybe. But I was so used to it that I couldn’t differentiate between being alone and being lonely anymore.

“I told you, I’m not interested in a relationship,” I said, sidestepping Adil’s question. “All this football shit. Makes dating too complicated.”

“Footballers date all the time. I mean, Asher’s arguably the most famous person on the team, and he’s engaged.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is.”

“Why? Because of Evie?”

I fell silent. Adil’s goofy persona fooled a lot of people, but underneath the jokes, he was sharp as a tack.

“You can’t always use her as an excuse,” he said. “There are plenty of single dads in the world. At some point, you have to put yourself out there again.”