can anyone tell me what happens if youre on crush with both cove and baxter and you end up dating baxter? is it even possible to date baxter if you do?
From what I can tell, as long as you are not actively dating Cove, you can still date Baxter during Step 3. You can have a crush on both of them and there won't be any problems, but if you start dating Cove before you meet Baxter, and ESPECIALLY if you set your affection for Cove as "love" for Step 3, then you can no longer date Baxter as Cove will automatically lock you out of having a crush on him. The game will only give you the option of being "fond" of him in this case.
It's kind of the same thing for Derek. You can have a crush on both Cove and Derek for step 2, but if you start dating Cove and change your affection to "love", the game will automatically lock you out of loving Derek.
Inversely, if you choose to be with either Derek or Baxter, Cove will be brought down to the role of childhood friend/best friend during each of their endings since you decided to choose Baxter/Derek instead of Cove.
Basically, you can have a crush on literally everybody at the same time as long as you don't commit to one specific person. As soon as you commit to someone, though, you are locked in and you can't really reverse the effect (since you can't break up with Cove once you commit to him. You can reject him if he tries to confess to you, but you can't break up with him once you accept.)