Page 111 of Beyond the Rules

Until thismoment.

Any other woman would’ve been delirious with happiness. But I wasn’t any other woman. I was me. Flawed. Confused. On the run. My fears ambushed me, piling up like heavy boulders in my chest. I could almost hear my engines roaring, getting ready for blast off, powered by a few words I’d eliminated from my vocabulary a long while back.Kids. Family.Commitment.

“What is it, Nina?” Tanner asked. “What’swrong?”

Commitment bred betrayal and tore families apart. It was a fact. And even if I could somehow manage to get over my terrors, there was no scenario in the world where this could work. There were rules out there that would make us pariahs outside of this house. How could we truly become a family in a world where the definitions of love were sonarrow?

The truth was, it was still a man and a woman out there. On a good day, it was also two men, or two women. We’d gone as far as a accepting a guy and several women, although admittedly, only for religious purposes. But one woman and three guys? No. Itwouldn’tfly.

“She doesn’t believe we can make this work.” Tanner translated my fears into hard, concrete truths, his eyes dim, his mouth straight. “Hell, she doesn’t thinkshecan makeitwork.”

I doubled over and rocked back and forth in my chair. He was right. I was not equipped for this, had never expected this from them. I was a hacker, in, out, on to the next hack. What they wanted from me? I may not be abletogive.

“And here I thought you were a spitfire who didn’t give a damn about the rules.” Zar exhaled, hard. “So maybe we won’t be the conventional, traditional family everyone is used to. But we can makeitwork.”

Oh, my God. I was no good at family. Eventually, we’d implode. Like my own family had. My father. My mother. My brother. Everybody had either left or died. BecauseIwasn’t enough to make it stick. BecauseIcould never keep ittogether.

“We can do this,” Aiden said with certainty I didn’t share. “We just have to take it one step at a time and hash it out alongtheway.”

“We can make it happen,” Tanner added. “If we share our dreams and work like hell to make themcometrue.”

“Fuck the rules,” Zar spat. “We don’t give a damn. We’re used to executing againsttheodds.”

I’d committed to only two things in my entire life, first, to keeping my brother alive and second to helping his wounded warrior colleagues. I’d failed at both. Daniel was dead and I had ended up in jail, trapped and teetering at the very edge ofmadness.

Tanner’s eyes were reading me as if I were an open book. “We’ve surprised you.” It wasn’t a question so much as anobservation.

“True,” I mumbled, a gross understatement and a feeble apology for not being the woman they wanted metobe.

“Okay, we get that.” He eyed me as if I were so fragile I might shatter any time. “So here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna take your time to think about allofthis.”

“Tanner’s right,” Zar said, unusually subdued. “No need to answer usrightnow.”

“But tomorrow would be good,” Aiden put in, rubbing the clean lines of his clenched jaw, ignoring the hostile stares that Tanner and Zar shothisway.

“I know we’re not good enough for you,” Zar rumbled, his voice even lower than usual. “And we fucked up by keeping the truth from you. But you ought to give this a chance. You ought to giveusachance.”

I winced, as if Zar’s words had punched me in the belly. I hated this, the pain I saw on their faces, the utter sense of disappointment radiating from them, the feeling that I’d fallen from great heights and there was going to be a huge, bloody mess when I hitbottom.

“Just think about it.” Tanner flashed one of his professional smiles, the one he used to calm and soothe. “In the meanwhile, let’s go to the wedding, have a little fun, see what life feels like beyond thesewalls.Okay?”

I lifted a non-committal shoulder and got up from my chair. I was nearly in shutdown mode. I begged for ten minutes to redo my ruined makeup and, clinging to the presidential pardon that seemed to be burning in my hands, made my way to my room. My stomach was in frank rebellion and the painful tightness in my chest made it hard for me tobreathe.

I climbed the steps slowly. I loved these men. There was no question about that. What they’d done for me was well beyond and above. They’d taken me in, they’d protected me, they’d cared for me in the sweetest, kindest ways. If all of that wasn’t enough, they’d gotten me a presidential pardon. Apardon!

I had just received the sweetest, most amazing, incredible proposal of my life. Why wasn’t I saying yes, hell yes, andabsolutelyyes?

Because I was broken inside, had been broken for a long time. True, the barriers that we faced were very real, but my SEALs could bulldoze over those. They were strong, brave, resilient, and brilliant, and nothing would stop them for accomplishing theirobjectives.

The problem was me. I was indeed the weak link. The truth was that I didn’t deserve Tanner, Aiden, and Zar’s affection individually, let alone together. I didn’t deserve them, not because they weren’t good enough for me—never that—but becauseIwasn’t good enoughforthem.

* * *

Tanner

“What the fuck just happened here?” Zar demanded as soon as Nina went inside. “We said sorry. We got the pardon. We told her the truth and asked her to stay. But she didn’t say yes. Why thefucknot?”

“She doesn’t want us.” Aiden scrubbed his face in shocked disbelief. “She’s donewithus.”

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