Bachelor in Paradise's Blake and Caelynn Face Off Over Exposed Text Messages
Blake Horstmann and Caelynn Miller-Keyes finally came face-to-face after their dramatic season on Bachelor in Paradise.
At the beginning of the season, Horstmann, 30, received backlash after Miller-Keyes revealed he’d hooked up with her, just one day after sleeping with Kristina Schulman at the Stagecoach Festival in April.
During the two-night BiP premiere, Miller-Keyes, 24, tearfully told cameras he’d called their night together a “mistake” and begged her to keep the tryst a secret. The audience was on her side, especially as Horstmann pursued two other women in Paradise: Tayshia Adams and Hannah Godwin. But as the episodes aired, Horstmann posted their text messages on his Instagram Story. Their conversation seemed to debunk her story, suggesting she sought him out for sex and was just as concerned about people finding out.
During Tuesday’s Bachelor in Paradise reunion, host Chris Harrison asked Horstmann if he knew that his behavior would lead to backlash — and the 30-year-old was quick to explain.
“Going into Paradise, especially after the weekend at Stagecoach, I did know, I knew it (his hookup with Miller-Keyes) wasn’t this big secret,” Horstmann said. “I didn’t know how to approach it because I didn’t want it to seem like I was walking around like, ‘Hey look at these notches on my belt.’ It wasn’t like that. And I didn’t want it to come off like that and I didn’t want to talk about other people’s private sex lives to other people when everybody was down here to find somebody. I wasn’t about to go share and slam people’s names on that beach for having hooked up with me or what not.”
“Paradise was, a lot of it was my fault, but it was really hard,” he added. “From beginning to end, I felt like I had hurt so many people and I had done so many things wrong that didn’t really know how to right things in a sense. … I didn’t do anything malicious. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. I wasn’t trying to lead anybody on.”
At this point, Harrison stepped in and asked Horstmann to describe in detail what exactly transpired between him and Miller-Keyes before Paradise.
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“We started talking,” Horstmann said. “I did like Caelynn and Caelynn liked me, but at no point were we in any kind of exclusive relationship. This is my interpretation, but we had talked from January to March, then Stagecoach happened, then a week before Paradise we decided if somebody asked us we were going to tell people. Going into Paradise, that was my thought. She said, ‘It’s not a big deal unless we make it a big deal.’ So I didn’t go into Paradise making it a big deal.”
From Miller-Keyes’ perspective, she said, “there’s so many layers to this.”
“I was like, ‘It’s not a big deal if we don’t make it a big deal but let’s come in and be fully honest.’ So, I came in and I was honest and I felt like the reason I was so upset was because I felt like I was being ignored the whole time on the beach,” she said. “He was talking to everyone else he talked to prior. That was where I kind of exploded and I fully regret that.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I take ownership for everything,” she said. “There were a lot of hurt feelings there. I don’t think you’re a bad guy,” she told Horstmann. “Watching it back, I know that you’re not a bad guy. It just sucks that it’s come to what it has. I was hurt and that’s the emotions that you saw.”
After Miller-Keyes told cameras that Horstmann had called their night together a “mistake” and begged her to keep it a secret, Horstmann felt the need to release the text messages to prove otherwise.
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“The reason that I released these text messages is because of the allegations you said that were not true,” he told Miller-Keyes during the reunion. “If I were to sit on this stage and say you know I didn’t sweet talk her, she came onto me, I would’ve been laughed off the stage. Nobody would have believed me.”
Fighting back tears, Miller-Keyes responded, “I’ve never felt so exposed or violated in my entire life. I truly feel disgusting that everyone has seen that s—. That to me is the lowest of the low.”
Horstmann has since deleted the screenshots and publicly apologized for what went down at the music festival.
“I knew that she would get attacked for embellishing the truth,” Horstmann said. “But what I saw, and what was hard to see was the fact that she was getting attacked for having sex. For me, that was too much.”
“I told you that was going to happen,” Miller-Keyes fired back. “You called me right before you posted those and I told you that was going to happen. You knew all of this was going to happen.”
“Your whole point in this, this was premeditated,” she added. “You have been holding onto this since July. Your whole point was to discredit me and you’ve done far more than that. You’ve discredited me in every aspect of my life.”
After Onyeka Ehie called out Horstmann for “slut-shaming” Miller-Keyes, Harrison asked if he saw his behavior as a “violation” of her.
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“I knew people were going to be mad at me, but I felt like I had to defend myself,” he explained.
“I’m sorry, Blake,” Miller-Keyes said. “I was hurt and I was sad. I fully over-reacted. I’ve apologized time and time again, but I would never stoop so low to air those text messages.”
With the entire cast encouraging him to apologize, Horstmann stepped up.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he told Miller-Keyes. “I’m so sorry that you got attacked and I’m so sorry that you are feeling the way you are. And I want to apologize to everybody because I feel like my actions before Paradise ruined some of your guys’ experiences and that is not what I meant to happen. Clearly I made some mistakes and I’m going to learn from them.”
