 After the relationship ended, the writers planned on pairing Cane with Phyllis Summers (Michelle Stafford), but the popularity of Phyllis' romance with Nicholas Newman (Joshua Morrow) halted the plans for the pairing.Cane was instead written into a romance with Lily Winters (Christel Khalil); Goddard described Lily as becoming Cane's "anti-Amber".He felt the character lost a "certain amount of edge" and a "certain amount of his dynamic" after being paired with Lily but said it was replaced with "a level of compassion, understanding, tolerance, romance and love", since that those characteristics were "all the things that daytime is really about at its core".