Page 55 of Learning to Run

Okay, now we were getting somewhere.

Hmm, it hadn’t taken as long as it had last time he’d losthis mind, so maybe having a Dom made finding his sanity easier when it wanderedoff?

“Would you like to tell us about it now, or is it a cuddleand get it out later kind of a conversation?” Bates asked the best questionsand he even reached out and stroked Cash’s head.

Cash was so cute, he leaned into Bates’s touch and sighed.“No, we can do it now.”

That was good because I wasn’t sure his mental stabilitycould wait if we dragged it out. Cash hadn’t even been able to pick out dinnerand he loved Italian food.

“Alright, where should we start?” Bates’s even tone had evenme relaxing and I hadn’t been stressed.

Just hungry.

I was going to have a snack next time Cash had a meltdown.

“Well, the day started with a conversation in my morningclass, that stupid family relationships psychology one.” He hated that classbut he’d needed a few more credit hours and it’d been the only one that fitinto his schedule.

Oh, was this about our biological family?

“The class was on setting healthy relationship boundaries.”Leaning back in his chair, Cash frowned. “It wasn’t…I couldn’t relate to any ofit.”

Why?

If it’d been just the two of us, I wouldn’t have asked, butBates was there to fix things if I drove him nuts, so I decided to take achance. “Why?”

When they both looked at me, I tried again with more words.“I mean, we’re awesome at explaining what we need from Bates and we’re doingbetter at telling Brady no. We’re even doing great at putting healthy distancebetween us and our biological family. I think we’ve done an awesome job oflearning healthy boundaries.”

We probably needed to work on a few areas, but overall, Iwas impressed with us.

Cash frowned, but it was his confused one not his frustratedone. So we were doing better, but I was still a bit lost. “I… Yeah, I guess wehave.”

So?

Bates always did a great job of fixing conversations thathad wandered a bit off the path. “So you’ve made a lot of progress, becausejust wrangling Brady is an impressive feat, but something made you think youweren’t doing a good job on boundaries?”

Licking his lips and wiggling, Cash nodded. “It sounds evenmore insane now, but the discussion eventually started focusing on boundariesin dating relationships and it got…well…it got stuck on taking your time andmaking sure you’re not letting your partner push you into something you’re notready for and I realized we might be pushing you into stuff you’re not readyfor.”

If anyone was pushy it was me.

Bates probably knew that too because he just blinked for amoment before cocking his head. “Okay, I’m going to process that for a minutewhile you tell me what else upset you. I think I need the full picture of yourday in order to respond. Piecemeal isn’t going to work with this.”

Good point.

“Alright.” Cash still looked confused, but I thought heliked having someone else take charge of fixing his drama.

Bates was doing a much better job than I would have becauseCash immediately started spilling out the rest of his frustrations. “Afterclass, a few other students were continuing the discussion on relationships andI got caught up in it as I went to get coffee.”

I could see that happening. He liked talking to people andhe had a hard time telling them to mind their own business. He was just ascurious as I was, even if he didn’t like to admit it. “They asked about myrelationships.”

Frowning, Cash cocked his head. “Maybe because I wasn’tsharing enough in class? I don’t know, but somehow, they thought I was chargingheadfirst into a relationship going nowhere and they were really stumped on thewhole three people thing.”

Clearly they’d led very sheltered lives.

We weren’t anywhere near the weirdest people I’d met oncampus.

“I managed to escape—coffee just wasn’t worth it—but theywere so confusing, and then when I got back, I saw the stairs guy again and heasked me if we’d moved in together already.” Cash sighed, looking sheepish.“And that just seemed to be the icing on the cake? I don’t know. It just feltlike a long day.”

Oh yeah.

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