The Things I Saw Coming

Navalie "Navi" Everheart was never supposed to come home.

Born to a fifteen-year-old mother and nearly placed for adoption, Navi was eventually brought back to the small East Texas home and raised by her grandparents. Multiracial-White, Black, and Native American-but often mistaken for White or Mexican, causing her to feel uncertain about her identity. Navi also grows up carrying wounds nobody really knows how to talk about.

By twelve, she has survived things no child should have to understand.

As she gets older, Navi searches for the love she never learned to give herself. Older men make her feel wanted. Attention makes her feel valuable. Sex becomes tangled with affection, validation, and love.

And Navi LOVES love.

There's Micah, the older man who once made her feel special.

Kam, the toxic love she can't seem to quit.

And Sheldon-steady, patient, and everything Navi claims she wants but may not know how to accept.

But Navi has another secret.

She sees things.

Brief flashes of moments that haven't happened yet. Conversations before they happen. Faces she doesn't recognize. Warnings she rarely understands until it's too late.

Set in Houston, Navi's story is raw, messy, romantic, funny, and painful-a story about trauma, family, race, sex, toxic love, friendship, and self-worth.

Navi has spent her whole life wanting someone to choose her.

Maybe the person she needed to choose all along was herself.

Because being wanted isn't the same as being loved.