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“She’s going to hate it when Travis ends up even more overprotective than you.”

“She idolizes him. Can you just get him to tell her drinking is bad? Maybe throw in that sex and drugs will ruin her career?”

“I’m not sure if I’m relieved that you’ll clearly get along with him when he decides to give you a chance, or if I’m terrified Alana’s been right all along.” Sean figured he should be more worried about how much shit Alana was going to give him if she decided he’d just found a gay version of Travis.

“Right about what?” Jaime stopped at a bench and sat down, leaving space for Sean to sit next to him.

“Nothing.” Sean sat closer than he felt he should, but it still wasn’t as close as he wanted. Jaime didn’t move away, but he didn’t close the space either. If he didn’t want to move closer, he probably wasn’t ready to hear Alana’s crazy theories about him and Travis. “So I’ll see you there?”

“Yeah. I mean, we can’t—”

“I know,” Sean said before he could finish. “It’s okay. But you’ll be there.”

“Well, yeah.” Jaime turned his head to the side and looked at him, searching his face like he wasn’t sure what he was even looking for.

“Good. That’s good.” Sean found himself struggling to think up any other topic before a silence could set in. “That presentation you were working on, how’d it turn out?”

Jaime hesitated like he knew there was something he’d missed, but instead of probing, he leaned back on the bench again and launched into his answer.

Chapter 6

“S
HE
’
S
NOT
even late,” Sean pointed out when Travis looked at his watch for the second time. He turned away from Travis to face the barre. Maybe if he focused enough on the warm-up, Travis would only punish Alana for her lateness.

“She’ll be late in ten minutes—which will make her ten minutes late unless she did her warm-up on the way.”

Sean didn’t have to look to know Travis was glaring at the door like it would make Alana walk through it. When Travis walked to him to correct his form a minute later, he knew better than to argue that Travis hadn’t actually changed the position of his leg at all. When the door creaked open a few minutes later, Travis didn’t turn around.

“You’re late. I’m not letting you start until you’re warmed up, so you’re late.”

Alana didn’t answer. Instead, she took a spot on a barre across the room instead of next to him, even though they were the only dancers in the room. Sean hazarded a look over his shoulder, but couldn’t catch her eye in the mirror at all. When she still hadn’t filled the space with her normal chatter two minutes before rehearsal, Travis sighed.

“I’m going to regret this, and I know it, but what’s wrong? You have two minutes.”

Alana stepped away from the barre and walked to them, her pointe shoes clunking on the floor. She looked at Travis first, and then let her eyes flick to Sean for a second before looking at the floor. He could see Travis shift from annoyed to worried just before she steeled herself and looked up as she settled her hands on her hips.

“This is probably going to make us late. We’ll be dealing with it more than two minutes, and we won’t be able to make it up, because we should really not run late today—which is why I figured I’d try to make it through rehearsal and then try to make Sean take me home for some reason, but I just can’t. I can’t go through this whole rehearsal like nothing is wrong.”

“The show opens next week. This rehearsal is not getting cut short. The interns can sit and watch if they need to.”

“Or you could cancel them? Maybe call Lupe right now?” Alana suggested, as if Travis had ever canceled a rehearsal in his entire career.

“Not a chance.” Travis shook his head. “Just get out with it. We’ll talk about whatever it is, and then rehearsal is starting no matter what it is.”

“Okay, okay, but you have to let me get through the whole thing. Because I’m going to say the first part, and you’re going to want to yell at me, so clearly there is a second part that is more important, if I’m telling you the part that’s going to make you yell at me. Otherwise I would not just tell on myself when I know you’re going to actually come back and remember to be mad at me for it after all the other shit is dealt with.” Alana stood with her hands on her hips while she waited for Travis to answer.

Travis pinched the bridge of his nose as he nodded and waved his hand for her to move on with it.

“So, Shalonda called me last night and said a lot of the dancers called in, and yes, I know, I know, you hate when I take work go-go dancing, but Mom’s been taking so many shifts to cover Diana’s tuition, and it’s not like they can even really touch me, because I always just dance in the cages, and you know I’m not going to really get injured, and no, I’m not letting you pay me not to do it.”

“Is this the part I’m supposed to be mad about later?” Travis said through his teeth. “Because it’s going to happen, but if there’s more, you should move on.”

“Right. So, you know I don’t do it that often because it’s really not worth pissing you off if you find out, so I don’t know most of the girls, and I usually go home before the pole dancers because they bring them on later, and if I take the late-night shift, I’m exhausted in the morning.”

“Aleksandra was dancing?” Sean filled in for her. “That’s not news. She doesn’t do it all the time either, but she probably got called like you did.”

“I know, and I was just going to say hi later. And okay, I was also going to beg her not to tell Jaime or Sean.” Alana sighed and took a deep breath. “But then I realized Jaime was there. With a guy.”

“He can have friends,” Sean interrupted, but he knew on some level there was more.

“That he makes out with on the dance floor? Because that doesn’t seem like an arrangement you’d like or agree to. I’m sorry. I couldn’t just not tell you. I’m sorry.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alana looking to Travis for help as he backed away from them.

“He never said.” Sean shook his head and tried to blink away the tears starting to collect in his eyes. “I mean, we haven’t talked about it. He never said there wasn’t anyone else or that it was just me.”

“But you thought there wasn’t,” Travis said as he moved toward Sean again.

“It’s stupid,” Sean mumbled as he felt Travis’s hand on his shoulder. The worst part was that Travis wasn’t even surprised, because it wasn’t the first time he’d watched Sean build something up in his head that ended up not being half as real as he wanted it to be.

“Hey, no. It’s not stupid. He’s a fucking moron. That’s what it is,” Travis said with a slight growl in his voice that Sean didn’t even have the drive to tell him to drop. Travis tugged at his shoulder, and Sean gave in to the urge to slump against him and then bury his face in Travis’s chest to hide the tears sliding down his face. Travis’s arms came up around him. He was silent and still, with one hand firm on Sean’s back and the other holding the back of Sean’s head as Sean tried to settle himself with deep breaths.

“Check the hall,” Travis said over him when he’d finally calmed enough to breathe normally.

“It’s empty. Just us,” Alana answered.

“You’re going to finish warming up. We’re going to go clean Sean up, and then we’re starting. Five minutes. I mean it. Five minutes.”

Travis steered him down the deserted hall with an arm around his shoulders. Travis scheduled rehearsals on Saturday mornings so no one would see too much of his new choreography before opening night, and Sean was never going to hate him for it again. Travis left him slumped on a bench in the dressing room while he disappeared for a few seconds and came back with a damp paper towel and wad of toilet paper. He sighed and squatted on the floor in front of Sean.

“If you make me do this for you, I’m going to be even more worried, I’m going to make rehearsal even longer, and I’m going to make Alana take you home afterward so I can go buy a shovel.”

Sean rolled his eyes, but he took the tissue and blew his nose before taking the towel and wiping the tear tracks from his face.

“Okay. We’re going back, and we’re finishing rehearsal. If you manage to not completely suck, I will maybe end the rehearsal on time,” Travis said as he gripped Sean’s arm and pulled him off the bench.

“I hate you,” Sean mumbled, but there was no heat in it.

Alana stepped away from the barre when they entered and met them in the middle of the floor. Travis might have seen him make too much of almost every guy he’d slept with since they met, but it wasn’t like he’d ever invited Alana over for the show.

“It’s okay. You didn’t do anything,” Sean said before she could apologize again. He pulled her into a quick hug as Travis spoke over his head.

“Except that stuff she did do that we’re having a talk about when it doesn’t run even further into our rehearsal.”

“This is going to suck so much.” Alana groaned and pulled away from him so they could get to their starting positions. She wasn’t wrong. Sean knew on some level that Travis was torturing him to keep his mind off everything else, but when Travis called an end to rehearsal, he still fell to the floor without even looking at the time.

“Stretch out,” Travis said as he pulled Alana to her feet next to him. She tossed a panicked look over at Sean but Travis just handed her something from his bag, and whatever he said was not long enough for a talk about her foray back to the club.

“Come on,” Alana said when she got back to him. “Move before he changes his mind and remembers how mad he is at me.”

Sean started to protest that he needed to shower when he realized Lupe and Michael hadn’t shown up at the door. A glance at the clock told him hell had actually frozen over. Travis had ended rehearsal a full ten minutes early.

“I know. And he gave me cab money because he loves you, but it’s going to be pointless if we don’t go. Unless you want to actually confront him, but then Travis might decide we can rehearse for ten more minutes.”

“I thought you weren’t going to send Alana home with me,” Sean said as Alana pulled him up and handed him his things.

“I never said that—or promised not to buy the shovel. But I have to stay. If I cancel….” Travis didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. Travis never canceled any rehearsals. If he did, the whole company would want to know why.

Sean nodded and followed Alana out of the room and down the stairs. At least he could appreciate her ability to hail a cab in ten seconds at any given moment.

“Are you actually under orders to follow me into the apartment?”

“I’m not doing anything to make him any madder at me, so you’re pretty much stuck with me,” Alana answered as she leaned against him in the back of the cab. She was quiet for the ride and the walk to the apartment, but she called out as he moved to the bathroom to shower.

“Sean? Should I just not have said anything?”

“No.” Sean sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “It’s better that I know sooner than later.”

“Okay.” Alana let him close the bathroom door before calling in, “Travis said not to let you shower longer than twenty minutes. Otherwise, I have permission to go in and drag you out in case you’re crying.”

“I hate you both,” Sean called back.

Sean had three texts from Jaime ten minutes apart and a missed call when he got out of the shower and dug his phone out of his dance bag.

Outside in the usual spot.

We had plans, right?

Ok. Did I miss something? If I’d known I was getting stood up, I would have brought reading for class to kill time.

“Don’t call him,” Alana said. She was leaning against the door to his bedroom in sweats and a T-shirt. She’d taken her own shower in only five minutes.

“I stood him up, and he doesn’t know why.” Sean scrolled back through the last few weeks of text history filled with casual comments, plans to meet up, and more than a few sexts. There was nothing he really should have gotten feelings from. “He never told me he wasn’t seeing anyone else.”

“You are the most transparent person I’ve ever met. If he didn’t know how you felt, he didn’t want to know.” Alana lay down on the bed next to him and turned on her side to face him. “Also, if I let you call him, Travis will be mad at me. More mad at me. If I have to guilt you into not calling him by reminding you that I told on myself for your sake, I am not above that.”

Sean didn’t answer as he scrolled through his texts again.

“Come on. Leave it for now.” Alana eased the phone out of his hand and set it on the table by his bed. “I will even watch shitty Lifetime TV with you. We’ll make Travis cook us dinner when he gets home. I’ll text him.”

“Jaime can cook. He makes breakfast when I stay over.” Maybe because he couldn’t cook, Sean had made something out of that. He had wanted to ignore the evidence that Jaime made breakfast every day, whether he was there or not.

“I’m sure Travis can beat him in grilled cheese skills. He’ll throw in some bacon. You can have bacon. You have earned bacon.” Alana flipped the remote to some kind of reality show and picked up her phone to text Travis before settling against Sean.