The firelight flickered. He reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Maybe it needs to be both.”

That night, a storm knocked out the power. They huddled by the fire, a bottle of cheap red wine between them. Adrian started talking about his ex-fiancée, a dancer who left because he was “too busy filming other people’s emotions to have his own.” Lena, in a moment of weakness, admitted she hadn’t cried at her own wedding—she’d been too busy checking the seating chart.

“You produce love like it’s a spreadsheet,” he said softly.

The real trouble began when the studio insisted on a “chemistry test.” Not for the actors—for Lena and Adrian. A promotional stunt: two rival producers, forced to spend a weekend in a remote lake house, “writing” the final act. The hashtag #HateToLoveYou trended before they even packed their bags.

She sat beside him, their shoulders touching. The air was cold. She didn’t have a clever line, no snappy romantic dialogue. She just leaned her head against his shoulder and said, “I still don’t know how to do this. The real thing.”

“You made it unmarketable.”

“You made it true.”

“No one actually talks like this, Lena,” he said, flipping to a monologue. “‘My love for you is a river that floods the valleys of my loneliness.’ It’s pretty. It’s also a lie.”

“I fixed it,” he replied.