Was it all just a kiss?
Hannah Godwin found herself embroiled in drama this season on Bachelor in Paradise, and it all (kind of) started with a trip to Birmingham.
Early on this season, the blonde beauty was entertaining possible romances with three different men: Wills Reid, Dylan Barbour and Blake Horstmann. She ended up happily engaged to Barbour, but not without causing controversy with her romance with Horstmann -- especially when it was revealed that he had paid a visit to her hometown in Alabama before the show.
"So, the reason why he came out there was to have a conversation with me about the whole Caelynn thing," Godwin explained to ET's Lauren Zima at Paradise's reunion taping, which aired Tuesday. By the time Horstmann made his visit to Birmingham, he had already slept with both Caelynn Miller-Keyes and Kristina Schulman back-to-back at Stagecoach, and was allegedly messaging other women.
"He was like, 'I'm coming down.' I was like, 'Don't come,'" Godwin recalled.
The 24-year-old said Horstmann told her he canceled his flight after she told him it seemed "a little shady." "I was like, 'It's fine, let's talk in Paradise,'" she remembered. "The next day, I was shopping [in Birmingham] and he said, 'Hey, what are you doing?' and I was like, 'Shopping.' He was like, 'OK, I just landed in Alabama.'"
"I did feel like I owed it to him [to meet up]," she said. "It was a gesture, and it was just one of those things where I was like, 'Let's have a convo, see how it goes'... I think it definitely led to a lot of misunderstanding."
Godwin and Horstmann ended his Birmingham visit with a kiss, and she gave him a chance romantically in Paradise. She told ET that the way Horstmann described his Stagecoach encounters to her, there was no "emotion" attached.
"From what I was told, there wasn't any emotions attached to all of that... he was like, 'Yeah, we're all on the same page about telling like you about it. I see potential with you, so I definitely wanted to let you know,'" Godwin said, adding that her perspective of the situation was completely warped from reality. "You know, it's a week in, and I'm just trying to figure everything out and giving every possible connection a chance."
Godwin didn't expect to be judged so harshly for the brief romance -- especially by Tayshia Adams, who called her a "puppeteer" for stringing along multiple men.
"That sucked, watching back. I think she's totally entitled to her opinion and I'm good with a little healthy confrontation, but watching back, it's just like, 'Ouch!'" she confessed. "It hurt, it stung, but I'm OK with moving forward and past it if she is. It wasn't fun. I'm over here trying to figure my stuff out."
"I would say to ask any of the people in my close group of friends that know me and love me, and none of them would say [I'm manipulative], because I'm not like that. And I think I know deep down I know that I approach everything with the best of intentions and so it was really, really hard and heavy watching somebody say that about me," she added. "I haven't been in something like that before."
Adams was the first woman to date Horstmann this season of Paradise, and felt hurt that Godwin didn't tell her about their Birmingham meeting.
"I don't think Hannah is a manipulator. I think she was just trying to navigate the best that she could. Unfortunately, it could've maybe been in a little bit neater," she told ET. "If she was just open with me in the beginning, maybe it would have been a little different, but honestly it's tough."
"I understand where she's coming from now, after talking to her, and I think she did the best she could," Adams added.
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