Captured by the Canadians #1

Prologue

Sleepless in Cinnamon Grove

Max

It’s two o’clock in the morning. And I know I shouldn’t be here. Again.

I’m standing in the hallway outside his door, wide awake for yet another night in a row. Lately, when sleep decides to take an extended vacation, he’s the one who somehow brings it back. One of the only people who knows just how restless I’ve been.

We ended things more than two months ago. It was clean and mutual—mostly. But whatever thread tied us together never really snapped, at least not the way it should have. We’re friends, after all, and neither of us was in any rush to give up the perks that came with dating.

So we made a pact. We’d keep showing up for each other until we couldn’t anymore.

Until feelings got messy or one of us started seeing someone else.

And since flights have been the only thing I’ve been catching for the past ten years, it was Nyles who caught the feelings.

That was the line we promised not to cross.

We even agreed the last time would actually be the last time.

It took exactly two weeks for me to break that promise.

Because here I am again, six floors above my own apartment, heart racing, hand hovering inches from his door.

I give myself one final second to walk away. One last chance to prove I don’t need him.

I don’t take it.

A girl has needs.

The door opens before I even get the chance to knock.

“How did you know I was out here?” I ask, just as the elevator doors down the hall slide shut with a bright little ding.

“My alarm system alerts me whenever someone steps off the elevator onto my floor,” he says, voice calm.

I let out a nervous laugh. “Right. I knew that.” His is the only apartment up here, which somehow makes this feel even more intimate.

He exhales slowly, like he’s bracing himself. “What’s this about, Max?”

I glance past his shoulder. “Do you have…company?”

He folds his arms across his chest, and that’s when I notice he isn’t wearing a shirt. Just basketball shorts. Nothing else. Warm brown skin. Broad shoulders. Easy confidence. A confidence that knows exactly what he does to me.

To any woman, honestly.

I curse myself, not for giving in, but for never letting myself fall in love with him. Because he looks at me like a man I could love…and yet I can’t picture myself ever softening for him.

He’s everything my boss, Timantha, would want for me. He’s wealthy, wildly successful, and fine in a Luke James-meets-Kofi Siriboe kind of way. On paper, he is exactly the man I always thought I wanted.

He would be perfect, honestly, if our lives didn’t mirror each other so closely.

But lately, I’ve realized I’m not as drawn to the “rich and powerful” type as I once was.

I don't need a reflection of my own ambition anymore. I need someone whose life I can’t predict because we aren't exactly the same.

As the number two and tech lead for MatchSense—the fastest-growing matchmaking app founded by a Black woman—I spend my entire day surrounded by people, mostly men, like me.

Dating a man with the same demands, the same events, and the same relentless drive just feels like taking my work home with me.

I don't need a partner who matches my resume.

I need a partner who offers me a world outside of it.

People like me seem…redundant. And if there’s one thing people in tech absolutely hate, it’s redundancy.

He looks me up and down, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. “You’re doing this to me on purpose.”

I gasp in mock offense. “Why, whatever do you mean? You surely can’t be referring to this burgundy sports bra and the matching shorts that just happen to fit in all the right places?”

Then I pull my hands from behind my back and reveal the real temptation. His eyes widen.

“You made brownies,” he groans. “You’re evil.”

I shrug, unapologetic. “Desperate times.”

He shakes his head and steps aside, giving me room to pass. “You really should get your sleep habits checked out.”

“Oh, hush. You’re awake too.”

“Yeah, because random short women claiming to be my ex show up at my door at two in the morning without warning.”

I step inside, and the second my feet hit the polished floor, I’m swallowed by the quiet luxury of his space—skyline views, curated everything, that calm, expensive stillness he wears like a second skin.

The space opens up into soaring ceilings and a wall of glass that stretches from floor to ceiling, the Cinnamon Grove city skyline glowing beyond it under a full moon.

The living room blends into a sleek, modern kitchen where I watch him set the brownies on the counter.

The massive marble island and rich wood cabinets rise up the walls, everything in here is intentional. Controlled. Contained. Very not me.

I glance toward the terrace while he reaches for two wine glasses, still a little awed by the way his balcony spills out into the sky, like he bought a piece of the horizon and claimed it as his. The place is masculine and meticulous. It doesn’t shout. It breathes power.

He hands me a glass just as I turn back to him. “I was actually already doing it myself,” he says quietly. “So I guess your timing is…sort of perfect.”

I narrow my eyes. “And you were going to finish without me?”

He exhales, tired. “Max. We talked about this. We’re not a couple anymore. I don’t need to call you whenever I—”

“But you said as long as you didn’t have anyone else, we could still—”

He cuts me off. “And I don’t. Not anyone serious. At least, not right now.”

“Then why are you standing there with your guard up? You’re acting like you don't even want me here.”

“Okay. Jesus, Max.” His tone softens, resigned. “Let’s just do what we do so you can get some sleep.”

I take a sip and let the wine smooth the edges of my mood. “Fine.”

He leads me to the owner’s suite, and without a word, he moves to my side of the bed and straightens the pillow, the blanket, the exact little space that has somehow remained mine long after we stopped pretending we belonged to each other.

I climb into the bed. He climbs in beside me with plates for the brownies. And then, right on cue, he starts it.

I smile as the Martin theme song fills the room, bright and familiar. The TV casts a soft glow in the dark, warming his shoulders, my pillow, this routine we keep pretending isn’t a habit we refuse to break.

We don’t talk. We never do at this part.

We just settle.

He hands me a brownie, and our fingers brush. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I take a slow bite as the laugh track rolls, and I feel my body loosen inch by inch, tension melting away the way it always does when we slip back into this rhythm.

Familiar.

Comforting.

Dangerously easy.

He owns the full Martin collection, rare copies you can’t even buy anymore. We never intended for it to become a ritual, but it did, slowly, the way the most intoxicating habits always do.

I take another bite, and a crumb falls onto the bed. I pause, mid-chew, and offer a sheepish grin. "Sorry."

He just shakes his head. "It's fine."

The episode keeps playing, but I swear I can see him vibrating, nearly about to burst.

"Just do it, Nyles."

"No. Seriously. I'm good."

"Nyles? The longer you wait, the harder it will be for either of us to fall asleep."

He doesn't say another word. He just jumps up, disappears into the hall closet, and returns with his most prized possession: his handheld vacuum.

In seconds, the crumbs are gone, and I can practically see Nyles's heart rate and blood pressure return to a normal rhythm.

Since we are the same, neither of us sleeps well.

It was one of the first things we bonded over—back when we kept running into each other in the building’s gym at two in the morning.

Our “call time,” he used to joke. It was the hour when sleep had officially given up on us, so we’d spend it on the treadmills, trying to outrun the stress and the imaginary monsters chasing us.

Then one night, months ago, we discovered we’d both grown up falling asleep to the same sitcom. So we tried doing it together. Just once.

We’d lay side by side, laughing at jokes we’ve heard a hundred times, reciting lines before the characters do, our bodies loosening inch by inch until our shoulders dropped and our breathing fell into rhythm. For the first time in forever, we slept.

After that, it became our thing.

And now it’s our loophole. Our way of pretending this isn’t a relationship…while doing so many things that make it feel like one.

Especially in the mornings. Because that’s when everything goes wrong.

I always swear I’ll leave before Nyles wakes up, before he stretches, before his body finds mine.

But all it takes is one brush of him against my back, one sleepy shift in the sheets, and I’m wrapped around him again like I never learned my lesson.

I know Nyles isn’t it for me. He isn’t my happily ever after. He isn’t the man who makes my heart flutter or my soul feel seen. Even if Timantha’s app tried to convince me otherwise.

Yes, Nyles and I were matched through the very app I help run. And no, I did not secretly rig the algorithm to send me only fine Black men who meet my intellectual standards.

He’s just a beautiful man with an infuriatingly perfect body, a generous endowment, and a talent for making it extremely hard to walk away.

And sometimes, hard to walk.

As the episode where Martin is sick and Gina has to take care of him plays on the massive screen in his room, I whisper a lie to myself: this is the last time. I’ll leave before he wakes. I don’t need this routine. I don't need him.

But as I drift off to the sound of canned laughter, I already know I’m a liar.