Desire Me If You Can Chapter 28

They had produced and posted various videos for fire department applicants. One of them was a comparison of good and bad examples for interview preparation…

“You mean he said it exactly like that?”

“Yes.”

Watching the chief nod, Wilkins let out an incredulous laugh and said, “He really lacks any sense, doesn’t he? Maybe it’s because he’s a rich kid, but you wouldn’t think anyone would actually try to copy that verbatim.”

“Exactly.”

The chief agreed, but what he really wanted to say came next.

“But my point is, it’s a problem because he even copied the finger gestures exactly.”

Wilkins blinked, his smile frozen on his face.

“…Pardon?”

In response to his foolish repetition, the chief snapped back, several times faster than his usual tone.

“He didn’t just copy the answers; he mimicked the entire video—the expressions, the fingers, even the direction his eyes moved when he cleared his throat in the middle! He did that for every single question that was in the video!”

Caught off guard by such an unexpected statement, Wilkins could only stare blankly. People often memorize things after watching training videos, but that usually amounts to just memorizing the answers. But to copy every single gesture, too?

“B-but you must have asked questions that weren’t in that video, right? …You did, didn’t you?”

“Of course. But he probably watched some other video somewhere and copied those, too. I haven’t verified it, but I can be sure of it.”

Seeing Wilkins rendered speechless, the chief pressed him harshly.

“Do you get it now? That guy is a psychopath. So, before anything happens, just leave him alone—never touch him! You don’t know what he might do. There is no doubt that Grayson Miller is a mad Alpha-Prime driven by his pheromones; he is out of his mind!”

Wilkins had no choice but to say, “Understood.” Amidst the confusion, a sudden regret that he had done something unnecessary welled up in his chest.

∞ ∞ ∞

“To today’s winner, cheers!”

At Valentina’s shout, the women gathered there cheered “Wah!” and raised their beer glasses. Grayson sat smiling amidst them as they all toasted and emptied their glasses.

“We ended up here after all.”

To Rivet’s remark, another staff member replied, “Because the familiar places are the best. And this is a decent spot to gather as a group, anyway.”

There were only a few places that could accommodate a crowd this large. That was exactly why they always came to this pub whenever there was a company dinner or a gathering. It was the same place where they had held a welcome party when Grayson first arrived.

“It would have been fine if the men had joined us, too—not that they had to.”

As Valentina popped a French fry into her mouth and glanced to one side, everyone’s gaze gathered in the same direction at once. On two long tables placed side-by-side, the staff who had departed from the same place were sitting in separate groups. To be precise, it was Grayson and the female staff, and Wilkins and the male staff. The atmosphere flowing over the tables was as contrasting as the gender ratios.

Hearing their voices clearly, Diandre spat out roughly, “Mind your own business, we have no intention of getting a free meal from that guy like you lot.”

“We decided to drink among ourselves. Thanks, but we’ll decline.”

Wilkins stepped up quickly and politely refused. The chief’s warning was still vivid in his ears. For a brief moment, Wilkins imagined a scene where a fight broke out between the two tables, and Grayson, angered, flipped the table and then smashed a bottle over Diandre’s head with a smile on his face. The chief’s words—that it wasn’t Miller who was the problem, but Grayson himself—were true.

Ahem. Clearing his throat, Wilkins pretended to drink his beer and looked away, prompting the women to turn their heads away immediately as if to say do whatever you want and surround Grayson again. In reality, they couldn’t have cared less about their male colleagues’ wounded pride. Lately, the men’s behavior had even started to look quite pathetic. Listening to the sounds of laughter and chatter coming from the other table, the men silently downed their beers.

If they had gone to another place, it wouldn’t have been this miserable. They had been so fired up by the news that Grayson was buying drinks that they’d jumped at it, but the problem was that they had overlooked the fact that there was no other suitable place to go. Sitting there with the lively table next to them, they couldn’t find any joy in drinking.

“Hey, did you all come to a funeral? Why so down?”

Unable to hold back, Diandre whispered fiercely, and Ezra replied, “Not much to… be happy about, is there…?”

At the reaction of the others nodding in agreement, Diandre flared up, his eyes wide.

“So you’re just going to sit here and look miserable for all to see? Look over there—we can’t lose to them! Everyone laugh, I said laugh!”

Looking at each other, the colleagues let out forced “ha-ha” laughs. Diandre laughed loudly, as if for effect, and slapped his thigh.

“Wahahaha, hahahaha! Wahahahaha!”

“Ah… haha, hahaha.”

“Haha, haha, hahaha.”

The others laughed along, imitating Diandre. Even then, they glanced at the neighboring table, but the women were completely uninterested in this side. Isn’t trying to raise your voice on purpose just to get the attention of a girl you like something you do in elementary school?

“Stop it, you look even more pathetic.”

At Ezra’s restraint, everyone, including Diandre, fell silent. Why did things turn out this way? As they drank in the melancholic atmosphere again, Wilkins, who had emptied his beer, set down his empty glass and suddenly spoke.

“Losing the match—fine, that can happen. But there is one thing I cannot understand at all.”

When everyone looked at him in response to the sudden remark, Wilkins fixed his gaze on Dane and asked, “What on earth happened? Leaving aside the fact that you came in late, you wouldn’t have just come in late for no reason, right? Something clearly happened—what do you all think? Am I right?”

“You’re right. Dane, we’re dying to know. How did that guy beat you?”

Diandre asked in a rapid tone. Receiving their looks, which were a mixture of curiosity and anxiety, Dane answered listlessly.

“It’s nothing special. We just traded a few blows.”

“You fought? Why?”

“All of a sudden?”

Everyone asked for the reason in surprise, but Dane did not answer. Only Diandre drank his beer, looking restless. Without even looking his way, Dane said, “I just felt like hitting him.”

What did that mean? Everyone looked at each other in confusion, but the remark wasn’t entirely out of place. Ezra also agreed, nodding.

“I guess that’s true. I’ve been holding back the urge to throw a punch every single moment.”

“Like right now?”

As one person agreed, confessions poured out one after another.

“I’ve thought more than once about dragging him into the warehouse and locking him up.”

“I was thinking about puncturing the tires of that fancy Jaguar.”

“Anyway, I’d have no wishes left if I could just hit that handsome face of his exactly once.”

“That’s not right, you should use your wishes for something more important. I want to win the Powerball jackpot.”

“You jerk!”

After a round of retribution against the traitor, the conversation continued.

“Fighting is one thing, but why were you late?”

To Ezra’s question, Dane paused for a moment before saying, “We were fighting, and we both slipped and almost fell off a cliff…”

“What? A cliff?”

“The one at the end of that slope? Wow, that really was dangerous!”

To everyone shouting in surprise, Dane answered nonchalantly, “No need to react like that, nothing actually happened.”

It was half-true and half-lie. Luckily, neither of them fell off the precipice, but they found themselves in a situation where they had to climb up a sheer cliff. They had been beating each other up just before that, but it wasn’t the time for that anymore. Survival meant finding a way to climb up the wall first. And they both discovered it at almost the same time. And…

Dane added lightly as he brought his beer glass to his mouth, “We almost fell, but we climbed up anyway, and Miller was faster than me. That’s all.”

As he summarized reality to an extreme degree, one of the guys, who had been looking at each other in disbelief, asked, “Still, tell us honestly—you could have won, right? Yeah?”