SERIES

She’s a goth-coded game designer with a vendetta against emotional vulnerability. He’s a baking influencer who thinks feelings are best served warm. Kaia Lin built her brand on slaying monsters—digital ones, mostly—but her real-life sward is just as fast. So when her manager ropes her into a fake dating stunt to up her streaming numbers, she agrees on one condition: no actual feelings.

Nico Moretti had a thing for Kaia, from afar. He planned on baking elaborate cakes, cracking bad puns, and surviving the long enough to see who this girl actually is. But Kaia’s sarcasm hides softness he can’t stop noticing—and the more time they spend pretending to be a couple, the less fake it feels.

It’s not just a fake dating trope. It’s a glitch. A delicious, disastrous, romantic one.

She runs to escape. He lifts to feel in control. Samira Jaleel and Arjun Patel never expected to become each other’s routine. But when their friends start to fake-date for content engagement, they merge their morning jogs to share Intel. When fitness arguments become the highlight of their day, something shifts. She's grace under pressure. He's a gym bro with a military mindset. Together, they have the same ache: to be seen with ought needing to wear armor.

What starts as forced proximity becomes a fast burn, full of repressed feelings, clashing philosophies, and gentle unraveling. Because sometimes, passion hides in respect. And affection doesn’t need to be loud—it just needs to be real.

She’s soft-spoken, sparkly, and allergic to red flags. He’s wearing one as a cape. Yuki Tran noticed Julian Rivera right away. How could anyone not? He’s a loud PR shark—and visually, absolutely her type. But ever since they got pulled into their friend's whirlwind, he keeps showing up in her space. Flashy suits. Pick-up lines worthy of a host-club employee of the month. The occasional wink that makes her hot under the skin.

Jules, meanwhile, is thrown. He’s spent years mastering charm like it’s a sport—it went seamlessly with his runaway model physique. Enter Yuki. Tiny, sweet, elusive, and not the least bit impressed by his list of conquests. The more she dodges him with polite smiles and hides under cosplay, the more he finds himself wanting to play pretend alongside her.

It's not enemies to lovers. It's not even friends to lovers. It's “Wait, why do I care if she doesn’t text me back?” to lovers.

Everyone thinks it already happened. But the almost is what haunts them.

Miles Grant is all quiet charm and camera angles—a true creative behind the lens. Rhea Dawson is meticulous, brilliant, and far too busy editing other people’s scripts to consider the messy narrative of love. They almost kissed once. Neither of them talks about it.

They’re in each other’s orbit for good—working late on new campaigns, sharing playlists and inside jokes from elopements she organized and he documented. The chemistry is still there, carefully ignored. But there is always another job after the last one, and it gets to keep their feelings in the background.

Two reluctant business partners are forced to face the story they never wrote. It's about timing, and how sometimes showing up is the thing that demonstrates you can trust someone.

Tati West is done being everyone’s emotional first aid kit. She’s tired of fixing things, of holding it all together. So when she stumbles into Leo Cho’s chick coffee shop to help him unpack some French poetry books, she’s already exasperated. But the place is charming, and she plans to use it as a starting point for a story on third spaces in the city for her podcast. As the time passes, she keeps coming back, and the tea starts arriving just how she likes it—without her asking.

Leo is used to loneliness. His coffee shop is a place where he can observe people and be a part of their lives, without ought stepping over the line. When Tati starts showing up daily with her laptop and a mind that moves like poetry, he starts to get curious. When he learns she’s looking for a way out of her crowded family home, he offers the studio apartment above his coffee shop.

Melani Rivera built an empire out of pixels and grit. Twice-divorced, deeply respected, and equally feared, as the no-nonsense head of the creator's hub #InfluenceMe, she keeps her stilettos sharp and her emotions locked behind seven metaphorical firewalls. After two husbands left her for girls who smiled more and asked less, she stopped trying to prove her worth to anyone. She wasn't jealous. She just didn't get it. Why was it wrong to be decisive? Strategic? Unapologetically independent?

Oliver Moore never asked those questions. He already knew the answer. Years ago, as a kid, he watched Mel move out of her family home in a hurricane of ambition—and return with divorce papers. She hired him once, back when he was just a tech prodigy with a questionable moral compass, to help her rip off a cheating husband. He did it.

Now, he’s quietly embedded in her world—her go-to moderator, her behind-the-scenes hacker, her firewall. He’s younger, sure. But he sees her more clearly than anyone else ever has. And he doesn’t want to tame her. He wants to protect the parts of her the world doesn't bother to understand. She calls him her “secret weapon.” He calls her Mel like it’s a spell.

When a new threat rises—someone leaking private data and targeting Mel’s creators—it forces them into close quarters, late nights, and even more proximity.