At The Crossing

Introduction

There’s a reason hundreds of books about first love have been written over the years.

It’s an experience that rings true for most of us—and to read such stories allows us a temporary escape to remember how it once felt to have butterflies flutter in our stomachs, to feel bigger than the world we were ready to conquer with that special person right beside us.

We reminisce, and if somehow our lives had taken a very different path since then, we wonder, what if?

What if things had been different?

What if we’d taken chances that seemed impossible then?

What if we’d chosen that first love to be our last?

What-ifs are always questions that come too late and they’re ones we’ve whispered only in the deepest corners of our hearts where we realize that we may never have more than just bittersweet memories.

This story would be no different in the questions it asks—what if you could go back to the very thing you’ve run away from? And what if it’s too late?

This story is a tribute to the fragile beauty of first love as explored in Nicholas Sparks’s bestseller, The Best of Me, that’ll come to life on the big screen this fall.

October 17 is the date to fall in love all over again.

In collaboration with Relativity Media and Wattpad, I wrote Lily and Adam’s story with the same inspiration as any vintage Sparks story—a great love that endures the worst of us and hopes for the best of us.

- Ninya Tippett (http://www.wattpad.com/user/ninyatippett)