11 Minutes Novels & Stories

He waited for eleven minutes. He knew it was eleven minutes because he checked the time when he sat down and checked it once more because he was who he was, and the interval between the two checks was eleven minutes, which was the length of a board call that wasn't going well and also the length of his shortest recent morning briefing and also, it turned out, the length of time it took him to drink a third of a very good Malbec.

“Now.” Rory grabbed the empty box like he was about to flee with it. “Do we take the shrine?” “Leave the box,” I snapped. Rory set it down like it had insulted him. I shoved my phone back into my pocket and looked at them, suddenly frantic. “How much time do we have?” Micah checked his watch. “Ten minutes.” Rory gasped. “That’s not enough time to emotionally prepare.” Jace looked at me. “We’ll go.”

My boyfriend, Julian Vance, always said that people in relationships shouldn't use their partners as emotional dumping grounds. So he set a rule. I got ten minutes a day to unload on him. He said his job wore him out and he hoped I'd understand. I agreed. I even thought he simply had strong boundaries. Then my grandmother died, the woman who had raised me on her own. I came back from the funeral home still gripping the reading glasses she never got to put on. All I wanted was for Julian to hold me for a while. He sighed instead. "It isn't that I won't stay with you. It's that you've used up your quota for today." I asked through tears, "Can't today be an exception?" He said, "Once there's a

“Gee, thanks for mansplaining the weather to me, I hadn’t noticed.” “C’mon, Cricket, please, just let me talk to you. I know this is all crazy, but will you at least hear me out? Just give me a little more of your time.” “More of my time?” she cried out and began pounding wildly on my chest. “How much more of my time do you want, Minus? You’ve already held me hostage for years and now you want more? I won’t give it to you. You can’t have any more of my time, or my heart, or me.”

Jessica — First Person It was less than twelve hours to the Cannes Awards. Not that I was counting. Okay, fine—we were all counting. Liam had a whiteboard. Wilhelmina drew a ticking time bomb beside the number 12. And every hour that passed, they’d update the board and go, “Operation Vindication in T-minus—” “Eleven hours, thirty-seven minutes, and seventeen seconds,” Liam muttered like a tiny NASA technician, fiddling with his high-tech device.

The message is clear. I sit down again, legs crossed, falsely relaxed. But my eyes remain fixed on the front door. My fingers drum on the armrest. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Nine minutes. This little shit better get his ass out of the way.

“Get it over with.” I swallow again, which does nothing to dislodge the knot. “Yeah.” When I’m finished a few minutes later, I carefully set the test on the counter and quickly turn away before I can see the results. “Three minutes,” I mutter under my breath. “The box says three minutes.” My wolf snorts in the back of my head. “You know it usually doesn’t take that long.” I purse my lips. “I’m waiting for three minutes.” “Whatever helps you feel better…”

“I’ve calculated the remaining travel time with a 97.6% accuracy rate. Approximately forty-two minutes, thirty-seven seconds, and twelve milliseconds.” Arian, never one to be outdone, added, “And if you include anticipated stops for restroom breaks and snack replenishment, the total time extends to approximately fifty minutes.” Cassian groaned dramatically. “I am emotionally unqualified to handle precise measurements of misery and joy simultaneously!” Lucian shot me a glance, shaking his head with a small smile. “Sometimes I forget we have three little mathematicians and one living, breathing drama queen in the back seat.” I laughed, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “At least it’s entertai

Just instantly there. "How far apart?" he asked. "Twelve minutes." "Pain level?" "Manageable, it's still early." He nodded, got dressed fast, made the calls to Garrett and Hannah. All of it done in under ten minutes with that sharp focus of a man who'd been through this once and wasn't about to waste time figuring it out again.

"Maybe less." I looked down at the digital clock on my dashboard. "We only have six hours total." "Then we move fast," Marcus said.