CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
JACKIE
Six months later…
For the first time in a long time Jackie wasn’t just surviving… she was living.
The realization hit her as she stood barefoot in the kitchen of the brownstone, sipping coffee while sunlight poured through the oversized windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square.
Outside, the park was packed. People walked dogs, kids chased pigeons, and tourists stopped to take pictures by the fountain.
The city was finally awake again after a long winter, and somehow Jackie felt like she was waking up too.
It had been six months since she moved into the brownstone.
Six months since Najee looked her in the face and told her he was all in.
And the craziest part? He still hadn’t changed his mind.
For the first few months, Jackie kept waiting for the catch.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop because, in her experience, that’s how love worked.
There was always a condition attached to it.
Always a hidden price somewhere in the fine print.
But Najee never asked her for anything. He just showed up, every day, for her, for Max.
For all the little things nobody had ever shown up for before.
The school drop-offs, the parent-teacher conferences, the Arabic homework.
The random Tuesday afternoons when she was overwhelmed and didn’t even realize it until he handed her a cup of tea and told her to sit down somewhere.
The late nights when she woke up crying over a son whose voice she hadn’t heard in months.
It had been months since Marcus called in the middle of the night threatening her.
For a long time, the only people who knew about those calls were Kormia and Syxe.
But eventually she broke down and told Najee.
She still remembered the look on his face when he realized she’d been carrying all of that alone.
He never judged her or made her feel weak for answering Marcus’s calls.
He simply made room for everything she felt, never rushing her or asking her to explain the parts she wasn’t ready to say out loud.
And somehow that scared her more than the threats ever did.
Still there was a transitional period. The biggest adjustment wasn’t the support Najee provided her.
It wasn’t even waking up every morning in Rittenhouse looking out over one of the most expensive zip codes in the city. It was learning how to rest.
Jackie had spent so much of her life fighting for every damn thing she had that she didn’t know what to do when the fight was over.
Now her mornings were slower and more deliberate.
If she wasn’t doing Pilates and SoulCycle with Syxe.
She was staging properties for Koi. Checking in on her house or booking events for Jackie of All Trades.
Some days she slept in. Some days she didn’t get dressed until noon.
And for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel guilty about it.
At least not anymore. Softness was her birthright.
It had taken Jackie damn near thirty-seven years to figure that out.
For so long she thought rest was something you earned after the work was done.
But the work was never done. There was always another bill, another shift, another problem, another person needing something from her.
Now she was finally learning that peace wasn’t something she had to fight for.
Sometimes it was something she could simply accept.
The only person still struggling to accept Jackies soft landing was Najee’s hating ass aunt. Sister Malika.
Well… not really. Sister Malika loved Fat Daddy.
Now Jackie? That was a different story. When Najee told his aunt they were together, Sister Malika gave him an ultimatum: Leave Jackie.
Or lose his position at the school. Najee submitted his resignation before the close of business that same day.
Jackie still remembered the look on her face when she found out.
Three weeks later Sister Malika hired him back.
Two weeks after that she invited all of them to the Winter Gala.
It wasn’t an apology. Sister Malika didn’t apologize.
But it was an olive branch. A stubborn one.
The entire night she and the rest of the family treated Jackie like decorative furniture.
Jackie didn’t mind, she spent most of the evening mentally tearing apart the tacky-ass decor.
But the night ended in chaos when Cash lost it, and they had to physically pry Najee off him.
Thank God Max had already left with Syxe by then.
Najee never gave her the full details of the fight.
But Jackie wasn’t stupid. She knew it had everything to do with her.
She took another sip of coffee, letting the warmth settle in her chest. Tomorrow was Cash’s wedding fitting.
Najee had finally agreed to go, on the condition that she and Max moved with him into the Bryn Mawr house come fall.
She had said yes without hesitation. Because this soft landing she had found?
She wanted it. All the way. Still, a small knot of nerves twisted in her stomach.
Old shit had a way of resurfacing. Only this time, Jackie Brown wasn’t facing it alone.