While Alex and Stephanie are wondering where the line is between caring and controlling, on the other side of Salem, Jada Hunter enters a battle where her opponent this time is her own heart.

After a long time focused solely on work, Jada finally allows herself to try dating.

She downloads an app, swipes a few times, and matches with Theo Carver – a good, intelligent, kind man, and a relative of Chanel.

Their first few dates are a bit awkward but sweet: coffee, conversation, clumsy jokes like “the police chief uses a dating app too?”, all creating a fresh, wholesome feeling that Jada had long forgotten.

But Salem never lets anyone enjoy peace for more than a few episodes. Just as Jada begins to genuinely like Theo, the disappearance and kidnapping case involving the DiMera family erupts. As the head of the force, Jada had no choice but to plunge into the eye of the storm. This meant working alongside Rafe Hernandez almost 24/7: emergency meetings, crime scene analysis, chasing down the smallest clue to find out who dared to target Salem’s most notoriously dangerous family.

The problem was that Jada and Rafe shared more than just their investigation files. They had an unfinished past that they had both tried to bury: unspoken feelings, touches that lingered longer than necessary, belated apologies. Now, forced to share a meeting room, a car, and the town’s safety, those things that seemed buried resurfaced. A moment Rafe pulled Jada out of danger, an evening they ate takeout in the office because they were too exhausted to go home, a glance exchanged after nearly losing a crucial witness – all of it made Jada’s heart flutter in a way she didn’t want to admit.