Exclusive Excerpt: K.J. Reilly’s Time Travel YA Romance Sixteen Minutes

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

Seventeen-year-old Nell knows two things for sure—she’s never going to get out of her rural, dead-end hometown of Clawson, NY and her best friend Stevie B and longtime boyfriend Cole are never going to leave her. That is until Charlotte, a new girl, arrives at their school and their lopsided friend triangle is turned on its axis. While Nell and Stevie B are certain that Charlotte isn’t who she says she is, Cole is caught fully in her thrall. There are secret calls and meetings between the two, and Nell knows Cole is keeping something big from her. Now, for the first time in their lives, Nell worries she could lose Cole.

When Nell and Stevie B finally confront Cole and Charlotte, they learn the impossible—Charlotte is actually from the future, and for life altering reasons none of them could have imagined, she wants Cole to jump to the future with her, leaving Nell behind. It’s dangerous, it’s reckless, but Charlotte convinces them that it’s the only choice they have. The trio’s future has always seemed set—but with the knowledge that time travel is real, and with a multiverse of futures before them, they now have the option to live lives they could have only dreamed about. The only questions are, who will take the leap and who will be left behind?

Sixteen Minutes won’t hit shelves on October 15, but we’ve got an exclusive look at the story for you right now. 

That first summer, we rarely talked when we met up on the path and walked toward the quarry. We held hands, our eyes skittery in the dark, our ears listening to the breath of the night: the sounds of the insects and the wind in the branches and the crackle and break of the leaves beneath our feet. Sometimes, when it was real quiet, I’d listen to Cole breathing, and sometimes he’d sing softly—songs by George Strait and Lee Brice, mostly. Not whole songs either, just catchy little lyric runs floating on those melodies he had stuck in his head.

We never told Stevie B what we were doing. Jumping was something me and Cole did without him knowing—some nights really late, after the three of us had hung out. Cole started bringing a blanket, and I started bringing a change of clothes and wearing strawberry-flavored lip gloss and lavender perfume I shoplifted from Henley’s Drugstore.

In the beginning, we were nervous about being alone together since up until that first jump it had always been the three of us, me and Cole and Stevie B, and now it was just me and Cole sneaking off together, which felt wholly wrong and wholly right and wholly different at the same time.

Then we’d sit on the blanket and kiss. And sometimes, when the kissing got past kissing and what was done was done, we’d lie on our backs and Cole’d point to the stars in the night sky, telling me stories about how big the universe is and how special we are, with me not believing one drop of what he was saying but lapping it up anyway.

I’d be the one to pull away and climb up high on the rocks, and Cole would follow me, and we’d stand together at the highest point and we’d face the fear of jumping together. Him being the bravest, me latching on to that like it was something we could share, like being brave was no different than a snack bag full of cookies. Then he’d scoop me up and he’d jump off the rocks into the quarry, holding on to me so tight that it was like we were molded into one. 

At first, we jumped mostly because it was an excuse to hold each other, but it became something else, and that wasn’t quite the whole of it anymore. It was more about the thrill, because in an instant we’d be falling fast, clinging to each other as that rush of adrenaline filled us up to the brim.

But there was something more than that, even.

Every time we stepped off those rocks, life felt bursting with possibility, like we were jumping off the earth or jumping away from our lives here in Clawson. Or maybe it was the thought that we might be jumping toward something better that made it feel so special. But each and every time, it felt like we were flying. And soaring like that, falling away from this place, felt like we were sneaking some thrill we weren’t meant to have. Then, when we’d pierce the surface, feet first in a rush of cold, we’d feel the sharp knife cut of the water against our skin. And right before our faces went under, we’d gulp a final, frantic breath of air into our lungs, and in that moment we’d know we were alive.

As I’m lying here in the dark, trying to make sense of the world, I keep thinking about the rush I got every time we stepped off those rocks together. How it felt to fall with abandon. How the brace of the icy cold shocked me each time we hit the water. How even though we were submerged in the cold and dark, I felt more exhil- aration than fear, even when it seemed that my lungs might bust wide open.

Then as I drift closer to sleep, I remember that first kiss. And the second. And the third.

How we circled around each other each time we resurfaced and caught our breath, and life licked at our skin and hearts, and those slips of silver moonlight danced on the water. How each time Cole’s lips were pressed against mine, how each time he promised he was my forever, I believed that there just might be magic in this life after all, and for me that magic was Cole.

Then I jolt wide awake. Eyes open, heart pounding, tears spilling onto my pillow as I’m thinking how badly I want that feeling back. Not only in memory, but for real.

I think about how badly I need to trust Cole even when we’re falling fast and we don’t know when or where we’re gonna land, or how much it will hurt when we do. Then I have flashes of Cole at my side the whole time my dad was dying. How a year later we found my mom lying on the kitchen floor after she overdosed, her heart not pumping and her lungs not filling with air. How I stood there in the doorway, frozen as pond ice in the dead of winter, but Cole knew exactly what to do. And he did it.

I think about how many times he’s been there for me—and me for him. How he defends me and holds me up, acting the whole time like that’s what’s meant to be. Then there’s all the normal everyday stuff of Nell and Cole—the ordinary things that are everything, even though they’re nothing. But that’s not the whole of it either. There’s something about me and Cole that makes us fated and destined and inseparable. It’s something I can’t explain with normal words—even words like those.

I try my hardest to hold on to that, but then I start thinking about the time me and Cole jumped into the quarry and got sep- arated and I almost lost him. How I searched for him, like I was searching for myself. How I dove down again and again, resurfacing each time, exhausted and spent, flailing about in the water, calling his name, thinking he’d surely drowned—thinking I’d surely drowned too, at least halfway. Then I think about how that night, in the end, I didn’t do the right thing by him, and I know what I have to do now.

I sit up. Grab my phone and send Cole a text: If you’re too scared to jump, I will hold you and keep you safe forever.

I wait an eternity for a response, staring at the blank screen as the wind gusts and the trees sway, sending shadows to dance around my room like ghosts.

Then, three dots and he’s typing.

My pulse quickens, and my breath catches in my throat. 

Four words pop onto the screen.

When I read them, I tell myself it’s going to be okay. 

I tell myself we’ll figure it out tomorrow.

I tell myself that it’s only four words.

I tell myself all those things you’re supposed to tell yourself when you feel like you’re cornered with your back against a wall with no way out, but I don’t believe any of it.

Then I slump back down in my bed, pull the covers up, and read what he wrote one more time.

Those four words, they break me.

Not this time Nellie.

Sixteen Minutes will be released on October 15, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB