Desire Me If You Can Novel - Chapter 117

13

At the sound of the violent shouting, the firefighters’ eyes darted nervously, looking at one another. They knew they had to intervene immediately, but the suddenness of the situation left them bewildered, and they couldn’t move quickly. In the meantime, Dane kept throwing insults and savagely attacked the man.

“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch! That little kid, you fucking bastard!”

“Da—Dane!”

“What are you all doing? Stop him, fast!”

“Dane, stop it!”

Coming to their senses belatedly, the firefighters rushed toward him. But Dane violently shook them off and continued to pound the man. The man was quickly sent tumbling to the ground, already covered in blood. Yet, Dane didn’t stop, hitting him again and again.

“P-Please, s-save me…”

The man pleaded, spitting up blood, but this only fueled Dane’s fury.

“You want to live? You killed your own kid and you want to live? You piece of trash! You deserve to die!”

“DAAANE!“

His colleagues, aghast, tried to restrain him again as Dane grabbed the man by the collar with one hand and repeatedly punched his face with the other.

When five people rushed him all at once, this time Dane couldn’t fight them off. As they wrapped their arms under his armpits and forcibly pulled him away, Dane thrashed his body and kicked the man with his legs. Enduring Dane’s fists and kicks, his colleagues finally managed to separate him from the man. Dane continued to roar at the paramedics who were frantically checking on the unconscious man.

“Leave him! I’m going to kill him! I’m going to finish him off!”

“Dane, I told you to stop!”

“Calm down, enough is enough.”

“You’ve hit him enough, he’s seriously injured. Stop!”

Despite the repeated pleas from his colleagues, Dane showed no sign of calming down. He continued to pant roughly, his eyes bloodshot as he glared at the man, leaving his colleagues to simply look at one another in confusion.

***

Dane was sitting on the roadside, his head lowered, holding an empty water bottle. Forensics had arrived and were busy searching for evidence inside the burnt house. The man, who had been beaten to a bloody pulp, was taken to the hospital, and they heard that the police had been called to take his statement. Soon, Dane would have to go to the police and give his own account. After all, he had brutalized a man based only on speculation.

“It wasn’t even confirmed…” someone muttered, and another colleague agreed.

“There was no proof that the guy had done anything, was there?”

“Since the child came out of that house, he was obviously the man’s son.”

“Even so…”

At the back and forth chatter, Grayson glanced over his shoulder. At the sight of his colleague’s chilling, mask-like, expressionless face, the whispering firefighters flinched, then one by one dispersed as if nothing had happened. After everyone had gone, Ezra, who was still standing there with a troubled look, sighed and patted Grayson on the back.

“They’re just worried, you know. If the man decides to press charges, Dane will have a headache, and he could even face disciplinary action from above…”

At that, Grayson offered a slight smile. It was a practiced, hollow smile, but Ezra thought he had accepted the logic—until he heard Grayson’s next words.

“Thanks for the heads-up, Ezra. I almost wrapped a hose around those bastards’ necks and strung them up on a tree.”

His tone was lighthearted, but his words were murderous. Ezra blinked in surprise and looked up at him. Realizing that Grayson was not joking at all, Ezra was stunned and couldn’t speak, but Grayson turned his gaze back to Dane and asked,

“Does he do this often?”

The subject was unstated, but Ezra understood immediately. “No,” he replied.

“This is the first time he’s been this worked up. He gets sensitive if animals or kids are hurt, but to attack someone with the intent to kill like this…” Ezra shook his head.

Grayson glanced at him. “Do you know what happened to Dane?” He was asking for the reason behind Dane’s extreme reaction.

But Ezra could only look troubled. “He hardly ever talks about himself. I didn’t even know he had a cat until we’d been working together for months.”

Tsk. Grayson clicked his tongue inside his mouth. Nothing but useless people everywhere. Deciding it wasn’t worth talking to him any further, he left Ezra behind and walked over to where Dane was sitting alone on the ground.

Ah.

Grayson suddenly realized. It’s the opposite of that day.

The day he rescued Dane’s ugly cat, he was the one sitting exhausted on the ground, and Dane had been standing, looking down at him. This time, the positions were reversed.

A shadow fell over Dane, who was staring blankly at the ground. Dane slowly lifted his head, and his gaze met Grayson’s. For a moment, they simply looked at each other. Grayson was the first to speak.

“Pretty boy, why does your face look like this?”

Dane just stared at his face without saying anything. What could he say to describe the feeling of having his own words thrown back at him?

“Ha…”

Sighing, Dane ran a hand through his hair and muttered in a defeated voice, “That’s not what you’re supposed to say, you idiot…”

Since Grayson had never experienced a situation like this, there was no way he’d know what to say. For a normal person, words would come out naturally, but this man had to calculate and piece together every utterance. Therefore, if he lacked the data, he had no choice but to copy what he’d heard or what others had done. Seeing Grayson’s blank look, Dane chuckled in disbelief.

“In a situation like this, you ask if I’m okay.”

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked immediately.

Dane just looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

That was the end of it. He fell silent again. Grayson remained standing there, watching him, but he didn’t feel good. He waited for Dane to say something next, but Dane showed no sign of opening his mouth. Finally, Grayson spoke first.

“What happened? Why did you suddenly do that?”

In response to the sincere question, Dane stared into the distance and replied in an emotionless voice, “Just because.”

The answer was too short. Grayson frowned. He suddenly realized how little he knew about Dane. Every partner he’d had until now had confessed every little thing to Grayson—work issues, family, everything about themselves. Even the most trivial matters.

But Dane had never mentioned a thing. Grayson didn’t know the city he was born in, his family, whether he had allergies, or even what his favorite color was. Dane had never spoken about it. Not before they dated, and not after. Never.

Grayson swallowed hard, moving his Adam’s apple. This was proof that, despite agreeing to date him, Dane hadn’t opened up his heart at all. If things stayed this way, how was Grayson any different from the other guys at the firehouse? That was absolutely unacceptable. Grayson wanted to be special to Dane. Being treated the same as them? Don’t make me laugh.

“What happened?”

Dane didn’t react to Grayson’s question. As Dane continued to stare into the distance in the same position, Grayson asked again in a rougher voice.

“What happened to make you so angry? Something bad must have happened, right? Right?”

When he pressed him repeatedly, Dane, who had remained seated for a while, slowly lifted his head. His face, turned toward Grayson, clearly showed his rejection.

“You don’t need to know.”

At that moment, Grayson felt something surge up inside him. Without pausing to control or analyze it, he blurted out impatiently.

“Why not? I’m dating you. Shouldn’t I know? About you, about the kind of person you are! Tell me, I need to know. I have a right!”

His voice gradually rose, eventually turning into a shout. Dane’s face, watching him, slowly hardened into an icy mask. A cold tension instantly settled between them.