“Slander only applies if it’s untrue,” Naomi said as she picked up the phone and read an excerpt from Scandal Boy’s post. “ ‘Everyone’s favorite Upper East Side princess has a dirty little secret. The rumor mill’s long been buzzing about Audrey Tate’s involvement with the late Brayden Hayes, but this Boy’s just learned that the Madison Avenue princess was no victim—she knew her prince was married the entire time and bagged him anyway.’ ”

Naomi lowered the phone with a disgusted look. “ ‘Bagged’? Who is this guy?”

“A little twerp, that’s who,” Claire said, pulling the iPhone out of Naomi’s hand, locking the screen, and setting it facedown in front of Audrey. “Forget about him. He doesn’t deserve a second more of your time.”

“Hear, hear,” Naomi said in agreement.

Audrey looked between the two of them. “Wait. That’s it? Aren’t you mad?”

“Oh, furious,” Claire said. “If I knew who he was, I’d put his nuts in a vise—”

“No, mad at me,” Audrey clarified in exasperation.

They stared at her. “Why would we be mad at you?”

“For telling Randy about our… history.”

“I told Oliver,” Naomi pointed out.

Claire nodded. “And I told Scott. Well, granted, he already knew from Oliver and Naomi. But I never made any effort to hide it.”

“Yeah, but those are good guys,” Audrey said. “They can be trusted.”

Naomi gave her a coy smile. “Yes, darling. And your guy was not one of the good ones. Now, if only we’d made a pact where the two of us could have told you that Randy was a shit… oh wait…”

“Naomi,” Claire said in warning. “Do you really want us to bring up Dylan?”

“Oof,” Naomi said, blowing out a breath at the memory of the guy she’d flirted with briefly before realizing Oliver was the one. “Touché.”

“Wait, you’re really not mad?” Audrey asked her friends, still baffled.

“No, but we will be if you don’t quit acting like this,” Naomi said. “Look, it sucks. Neither of us likes knowing that this asshole’s talking about you like this. But in terms of how it affects us?” She shrugged. “I’m good.”

“Me, too,” Claire said. “It’s been a long time.”

A year and a half. It had been a year and a half since Brayden had died, and her friends had moved on.

That was the crucial difference, Audrey realized. They didn’t care about this dirt with Brayden coming to the surface because it couldn’t hurt them anymore. They had new men, new loves. And Audrey was…

Fine. She was just fine.

Naomi had turned her attention to her own phone, and now her mimosa was frozen halfway to her mouth and she suddenly looked far more horrified at whatever she was reading on her own phone than what she’d read on Audrey’s. “Um. Audrey.”