The Best Friend Scandal - Lucia Jordan Page 0,52

to reach out and grab hold of him before he did something he would regret.

But I wasn’t fast enough. Arlo flew into a fury to protect my honor, and before anyone could do anything about it, he was already on the other side of the large drafting table, cocking his arm back to punch Cia in the face. The visual contradiction of a muscular and infuriated Arlo as he got ready to smack his fist into Cai’s perfectly pale and chiseled face was striking. Arlo’s knuckles met with the bridge of Cai’s nose in a stomach-curdling crack. Something was definitely broken on impact, but I just wasn’t sure if it was Arlo’s knuckles or Cai’s nose that had made the bone-splintering sound. Not that I wanted Arlo to get hurt, but I felt like the whole scenario would leave much less permanent and painful damage if it were Arlo’s bones that had broken instead of Cai’s perfect face. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Cai hollered and held his hands over his nose as the blood gushed onto the table and all the papers that the staff was trying to gather up. Even between Cai’s spread fingers and through the gushing blood, you could see that his nose was very visible and very crookedly broken. This was definitely not going to end well. I ran over to Arlo before he got ready to hit him again and grabbed his arm. I stood behind him and wrapped one arm around the front of his chest and held his arm with my other hand.

“Arlo, stop!” I said.

He was already in enough trouble now as it was.

Kerynne stood next to Cai with her mouth hanging open at the sight of Cai’s face. She also started to look a bit green at the sight of all the blood.

Cai looked shocked and furious, and also very worried about his face. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers!” he screamed at Arlo. He sounded like he was actually in a lot of pain as the blood dripped down onto his lips. “That contract works both ways, Arlo, and you just violated it by laying your hands on me. I’m going to sue your ass off, and I quit.”

Cai rushed out of the room and called for Kerynne to drive him to the emergency room. Kerynne shot Arlo a nasty look on her way out of the room.

“Of course you know that this means I quit, too,” she said. “We all quit. You’ve really done it this time, Arlo. You’d better hope that you didn’t permanently disfigure him.”

As if on cue, all of the other models followed Kerynne and Cai out of the room. Most of them stated that they quit on the spot, and the others would surely be leaving voicemails or texts later in the day to say the same.

Arlo was shaking mad. I could feel his body trembling with anger around his torso and in his clenched fist that I held in my hand. He wasn’t at all scared about Cai’s threat of legal action, which I thought he probably should be. Instead, he was just amped-up on anger. I didn’t let go of him, and after a few minutes, he calmed down and dropped his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he turned around to face me.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” I asked. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I’m sorry I lost my temper and escalated the situation. All of the models quit, and this is your project, too. I shouldn’t have overreacted as much as I did.”

“I’m not upset with you,” I said as I moved my hands down to hold his. “That was all completely Cai’s fault. He was out of line, and everyone knew it. But I am curious about why you wanted to beat his face into a pulp over a crude comment? Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he held both of my hands pressed up against his chest. “I just have this feeling that I always want to defend and protect you. It’s like I can’t even help it, a switch just goes off, and I get the act on it without thinking as if it’s a reflex.”

“Protect me? But I wasn’t in any danger.”

“I know, it’s not even just that. I want to protect your honor, too,” he said. “Is that ridiculous?”

“No,” I smiled. I let go of Arlo’s hands and wrapped my arms around him in a big bear hug. “It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s like you