Desire Me If You Can Chapter 19

It was a sunny day, just like any other. A sky so clear it was literally without a single cloud. A deep, vivid blue filled his field of vision. Seeing that, Dane prepared for work early.

He’ll be at work today, too, right?

Checking in the mirror to make sure he’d shaved properly, Dane thought to himself. If the worst came to the worst, he’d just knock him out and run. He felt bad for his teammates, but he had no choice. He had to save his own skin first.

His true gender had never been discovered before. After using pheromones to knock out an Extreme Alpha, they usually couldn’t remember what had happened, and Dane would leave immediately.

But I ended up using it on that guy twice.

At the sudden realization, he accepted it indifferently. I guess he has every reason to want me dead.

Just in case, Dane took out his trunk and prepared to pack. So he could throw in only the essentials and leave at a moment’s notice.

“I’ll be back, Darling.”

After kissing his cat, he left the house and drove his car—which was well over ten years old—to work as usual. With the fleeting thought that it was a bit of a shame to leave California.

∞ ∞ ∞

Dane parked his car in the designated spot and headed toward the fire station, only to pause when he saw a group of colleagues staring somewhere with furious expressions. Following their gaze, he saw Grayson Miller leaning against a fire truck, talking to someone.

“What is that?”

As he approached his colleagues and asked casually, one of them spat out, grinding his teeth.

“Exactly what it looks like. That bastard is daring to hit on Valentina.”

Valentina was the most popular female employee in the station. She was beautiful and had a great personality, so many employees liked her secretly. Some had gathered the courage to ask her out on dates, only to be turned down gently. Because of this, it had become an unspoken rule among them to “wait for Valentina to choose someone,” so they maintained good relations as colleagues on the surface. While continuing to make passive advances to subtly signal their interest.

And yet, that scoundrel dared to approach her.

Everyone was watching them, their eyes burning with jealousy and rage. Turn him down, Valentina. Reject him firmly and cruelly, just like you did to us!

However, their desperate wishes didn’t reach her. Half of the watching colleagues fell apart the moment they saw Valentina laughing and stroking Grayson’s arm.

“We lost! We’re finished!”

“No, wait. Valentina is kind. She’s probably just trying to soften the blow before rejecting him. That must be it!”

“She didn’t even touch a finger when she rejected me!”

“Give up, if she’s touching his arm, it’s already over!”

“Shut up! It’s just his arm, not his thigh, so don’t give up yet, you weaklings!”

Seeing the guys getting so excited and making a fuss when the people involved weren’t even interested in them at all, Dane couldn’t help but sigh. He shook his head and headed to the locker room, but behind him, gasps of horror, groans, and short screams erupted in turns. He didn’t need to look to know what had happened just by the sound of it.

“He touched her! He touched her thigh!”

“Wait, that guy is just huge. Look, it’s just that his hand naturally lands there. Calm down!”

“She’s stroking him! We’re doomed!”

“No, it’s not! There’s no way my Valentina would fall for a scoundrel like that!”

“Who’s ‘your’ Valentina? Stop sneaking in that bullshit!”

Leaving the ongoing uproar behind, Dane went inside. He didn’t care about anything else, but seeing him pull such moves, it was clear that Grayson Miller had no interest in him whatsoever.

He really doesn’t remember.

Dane brushed off the lingering worry and opened his locker at a leisurely pace. The bag he had packed that morning was no longer needed. It was a huge relief, since the journey wouldn’t have been easy for a cat that was both blind and deaf to endure anywhere.

Or perhaps everyone’s predictions were wrong. Maybe the excuse about coming to find the person who knocked him out was just that—an excuse—and he had some other motive.

Not that it’s any of my business.

Walking out with a light step, he found the employees were still in the same place. Looking away, he saw that Valentina and Grayson Miller had already disappeared.

“They went together.”

Following someone’s blank mutter, another employee said:

“They left us… Valentina actually fell for someone like Grayson Miller…”

“Did you see her face earlier? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Valentina smile like that… She’s never smiled at anyone like that before.”

“No, let’s be rational. They just happened to leave together. Maybe they were just heading in the same direction!”

Cold glares were all that met his words, which were meant to hold onto a final shred of hope.

“You’re the most irrational one here.”

“You’re the one who needs to face reality. ‘Same direction’? Yeah, right!”

“No, this guy might be right. We’re being too pessimistic! It’s not like it’s impossible, right?”

“Yeah, I’m betting on them just coincidentally heading the same way. Valentina isn’t the type to fall for just any man!”

“That’s right, none of us succeeded, so she falls for Grayson Miller in less than an hour? That’s what’s unrealistic!”

Their arguments gradually gained strength. Dane watched the farce with his arms crossed and leaning against the wall. To him, the situation was all too clear. The Madonna of the fire station, a flower on a cliff, had fallen for Grayson Miller’s face in less than an hour.

Idiots.

However, regardless of Dane’s cold gaze, those arguing the opposite started to lose heart and sway one by one after hearing arguments that fueled the hope they hadn’t been able to let go of until the end.

“That… could be true.”

As they were looking at each other, someone muttered, and another guy jumped on it as if he’d been waiting.

“I mean, we don’t know what kind of trash Grayson Miller is, but we all know what kind of person Valentina is, right?”

Nods and murmurs of agreement followed from all over.

“Yeah, that’s right. Valentina wouldn’t do that.”

“I believe in Valentina!”

“Me too, me too!”

Everyone huddled together in hope. They cheered and punched the air, but a few hours later, the moment they saw Valentina return with a dazed expression while fixing her disheveled hair, they collapsed mercilessly. Anyone with two eyes could tell what they had been doing during the two hours they were gone. To make matters worse, as if to deliver the final blow, Valentina even pulled Grayson toward her and kissed him first.

The news spread throughout the fire station by a few employees who had been outside inspecting the fire trucks. The staff waiting in the control room were shocked, and they had to finally give up the futile hope they’d been holding onto until the very end. Since some of them had liked Valentina quite seriously, the atmosphere in the control room was so gloomy it was practically moldy.

“Valentina was too far out of our reach anyway.”

As one person started, words of agreement followed from all around.

“Yeah, that’s right. Valentina never chose any of us.”

“Maybe Grayson Miller is a better guy than we thought.”

“Anyway, it’s Valentina’s choice, so we should support her, as colleagues.”

“Of course. We’re all in this life-or-death business together.”

Still, the atmosphere flowed reasonably well. It was thanks to the pride of macho firefighters who didn’t want to become pathetic losers even if they had suffered a heartbreak. Their stomachs churned, they were pissed off, and Grayson was insufferably annoying, but what could they do now that things had turned out this way? Yeah, as someone said, maybe that bastard Grayson is just a jerk to us and might actually treat Valentina incredibly well. Even while trying to hide their bitter feelings, giving up their one-sided affections, and wishing for their colleague’s happiness in their own way, the situation was not too bad.

At least, until a few hours later, when they saw Grayson Miller walking away again—this time with his arms around the waist of another colleague, Liz—heading in the same direction he had gone with Valentina earlier.