He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Hold on. We’re not done yet.”

“Fine.” She turned back around and waited. “I’m listening.”

She could practically hear his teeth grind in frustration. “It’s just… having your ex-girlfriend stopping by isn’t something you tell your fiancée. It felt strange to bring it up.”

“Especially since she didn’t just stop by. She said she wanted you back,” Audrey challenged.

“Wow, you were really thorough with that eavesdropping.”

“Well, she does, doesn’t she?” Audrey pressed, not letting him off the hook. “Want you back?”

He looked down at his feet, then back at her, shrugging. “So she says.”

Audrey looked at him carefully. “Whatever happened with you two anyway? Back then? You never talked about it. I thought maybe there wasn’t much to tell, but now that I know you and I have secrets—”

“Will you stop with that? We don’t have secrets. How old are you right now, eight?”

She didn’t rise to the bait. “What happened with you and Elizabeth?” she asked again.

“Oh my God, this is why I don’t have girlfriends,” he said, plowing his fingers through his hair. “They’re demanding and pushy.”

Audrey’s lips parted in hurt. “I wasn’t asking as a girlfriend. I was asking as—”

“A friend, I know,” he said tiredly. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just… I don’t want to talk about this, Audrey. It was a long time ago. She moved on, I moved on—”

“Except she didn’t,” Audrey persisted, not sure why she was pushing so hard. She only knew that she felt something strange burning in her stomach, and she wanted it to stop. “Elizabeth didn’t move on. She thinks you’re engaged, and she still came and made a move.”

“Because Liz knows this,” Clarke said, gesturing between the two of them, “is fake.”

The words weren’t meant to hurt her. They shouldn’t hurt her.

But they did.

“Got it. Well, if this is so fake, I guess this is as good a time as any to call it,” she said, suddenly exhausted down to her very bones.

“Call what?”

“The ‘engagement,’ ” she said, lifting her hands into air quotes. “Scandal Boy’s backed off, your mother got a lesson in not sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong, and your ex-girlfriend got the wake-up call that she let a good one get away.”

“That’s not why I’ve been doing this,” he snapped.

“No?” she asked.

“No!”

Her frustration burst out. “Well, how am I supposed to know when you don’t tell me!”

“Because I don’t tell you everything, Audrey!” he shouted. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. We can be friends without me having to fucking spill my guts every minute of the damned day.”