Siempre by Tessa Cárdenas Page B

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