Desire Me If You Can Chapter 24

“Alright, that’s it? One, two.”

Wilkins confirmed the count before giving the signal. The colleagues lined up on both sides cheered passionately, calling out the names of Dane and Grayson. Dane leaned forward, preparing to dash out at any moment. Wilkins looked between the two, then shouted with a tense face.

“Three!”

“Wooooah!”

“Dane, Dane! Our hope! Our hero!”

“Grayson, my love!”

“Run, run! Grayson, you have to win!”

“Dane, you are our pride!”

With the starting signal, a flood of intense cheering poured out, and the two pushed off the ground, sprinting forward. Down below the mountain, the cheering colleagues watched them. They could see the two of them, however small, except when they were traversing the newly added section of the course.

That area was a terrain that dropped sharply into a deep, sloped path behind the mountain, so the colleagues watching from below couldn’t see them until Dane and Grayson appeared on the other side of the mountain. That exact spot was where Dane was going to earn his money.

The flat ground ended quickly, and an uphill slope soon followed. It served as a substitute for the first stage of the test, stair climbing; here, they had to drag a fire hose up to the middle of the mountain. Even though it was a low mountain, the slope was quite steep, and carrying the heavy fire hose consumed an immense amount of stamina from the very beginning. The only advantage was that it was an empty hose, unlike the ones used during flat-ground training where they were filled with water.

Once they skillfully dragged the hose up, they reached the point where the equipment was placed. Then, they had to put the hose down and carry the firefighting equipment. As soon as the goal was in sight, they dropped the hoses as if throwing them away and picked up the gear prepared in advance. They had to carry two chainsaws, one in each hand, circle a tree about 100 meters away, and return to the starting point. Repeating this twice would allow them to move on to the next course. Of course, if they dropped the saws along the way, they would be disqualified. Since they could be seen from below, not even the slightest mistake was allowed.

Damn it, why am I going through this trouble…

Feeling the sweat already soaking his back, Dane let out a string of curses. While circling the tree, he inevitably ran into Grayson. Defensive instincts flared reflexively, but unexpectedly, Grayson brushed past him with no expression and circled the tree. Dane almost lost his lead during a moment of carelessness, but he immediately increased his speed and left him behind.

Next, instead of ladder climbing, Dane grabbed a hanging rope and scaled the rock face. Faintly, it felt like he could hear the shouting of his colleagues from below, but it sounded as distant as the buzzing of insects. As soon as the rope climbing ended, he grabbed a tree branch and crossed a small stream.

The uphill path continued. Dane kept moving his body mechanically, running without rest until he reached the spot he had pre-planned. After finishing a couple of courses, when he turned the mountain and entered the sloped path, Dane realized that this was the very spot he had been waiting for.

The faint sound of cheering had completely vanished. In the silence, he turned back quickly. Grayson was nowhere to be seen yet. Dane gasped for air and quickly scanned his surroundings. It was clear that this spot, put in place of a search portion of the test, had no proper footing as the path had disappeared. He found a relatively flat place to stand and straightened his posture. Two and a half times… that’ll be $38.25.

Come on, then.

Standing still with his ears pricked, he heard a faint rustling sound. It was Grayson’s footsteps. Approaching at tremendous speed, he seemed ready to reveal himself before his eyes at any moment. Dane held his breath and waited for the timing. One, two. And finally.

Grayson, coming around the low slope, hesitated. At the end of his gaze, Dane was standing tall. Seeing his long eyes narrow, Dane nodded.

“Hello, pretty boy.”

His slouching tone was full of sarcasm. Grayson stared at Dane without a word.

For a while, the two just stared at each other in silence. To be precise, it was closer to Grayson glaring and Dane facing him with a listless gaze. It was Grayson who opened his mouth first.

“To think you’d wait for me like this! Are you worried about me? As expected of a firefighter, our hero! How could you be this touching…”

“Let’s get you beaten up.”

Since listening to nonsense wasn’t in the terms of the contract, Dane mercilessly cut him off. Dane grabbed one of his trapezius muscles for a warm-up, rolled his shoulders, and tilted his neck from side to side once, causing Grayson to widen his eyes and ask.

“Beat me up? Me? You’re telling me you’re going to hit me? Suddenly? Why?”

The man was excessively talkative. For Dane, who didn’t usually speak much, it was deafening.

“Because I received a request.”

“A request?”

“Yeah.”

He took his hand off his trapezius and said.

“Let’s just stop after I hit you for $38.25 worth.”

Grayson’s face twisted. One might think he was flustered by the current situation, but that would only be the case for a normal person.

“$38? Is that all I’m worth to be hit?”

He asked as if dumbfounded, clutching his forehead. His reaction seemed to suggest that the fact that he was the one being hit was less shocking than the amount.

As the great playboy of the Miller family, there had been countless people who had tried to do “something” with him for money. While that “something” had sometimes been love or seduction, there were no shortage of cases where it was a request for assault or murder. Of course, it was the karma of the life he had led. The many “fleeting pleasures” abandoned by him had always been sharpening the blades of revenge.

But that was Grayson’s business, and Dane had absolutely no interest in such things. He just thought that since he was rich enough to rot, he must be shocked by the figure of $38. That was understandable. Dane accepted it easily and agreed with a still-listless expression.

“Yeah, I don’t take counter-requests. It’s bad for credibility.”

“Ah, that’s troublesome. Credibility is very important. Only…”

Grayson, who had waved his hands exaggeratedly as if it were ridiculous, sighed as if disappointed.

“It’s too cheap. Among the guys who came to hit me for money, you were the cheapest. Everyone else wouldn’t even dream of it for any amount of money, if only because they fear the Miller law firm. Couldn’t you have asked for more? Or is that the extent of your commission? You’re quite a bargain, aren’t you?”

He was spinning a long-winded speech about how cheap Dane was, but Dane didn’t fall for the provocation. He listlessly pushed his hair back and said.

“Don’t be surprised, it just means that’s all you’re worth. If you want to be worth more, try increasing your value yourself.”

And after surveying Grayson once, Dane added.

“If you try hard enough, you might make it to $40.”

“Hmm.”

Grayson, who had been blinking his eyes, soon wore a strange smile.

“Not bad.”

He wasn’t particularly pleasant, but this man had an outstanding talent for scraping on other people’s nerves. If Dane had as much interest in others as a normal person, he would have felt offended by Grayson’s words just now. However, Dane had a natural talent for not even listening to words from someone irrelevant to him. Furthermore, the idea that anything Grayson Miller said could dare to offend him was an absurd notion.

When Dane didn’t show the reaction he had anticipated, Grayson quickly changed the subject. Moving his gaze toward Dane’s hands, he asked.

“Is that it? Your tool for kissing me?”

He also has a talent for being disgusting. Dane added one more thing to his assessment of him and opened his mouth.

“If you think expressing it that way makes it hurt less, then fine, let’s call it a deep kiss.”

“I like it, deep kiss. I love it.”

Grayson clapped as if he had made a great discovery. Dane was starting to get tired of holding a conversation with this lunatic. It was unfortunate that he had spoken so much with someone who didn’t seem to be in his right mind. Without dragging it out any longer, he threw a punch. He had given enough warnings, and he had given Grayson plenty of time to run away.

A loud, booming sound echoed through the quiet forest.