For context, Hayden and Brian had been in a tumultuous on-and-off relationship for years before her death. In 2020, he was charged with multiple counts of felony abuse and pleaded no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or partner. Brian served a short time in jail in connection with the case, and in her memoir, which came out in May this year, Hayden wrote about their complicated past, admitting that she’d decided to “let go of [her] resentment” and forgive him. 

“I wanted Brian to be in jail just long enough to scare him, but not long enough where he’d become a worse person,” she wrote. “I needed him to admit his wrongs and change because of them, but I didn’t want to traumatize him in an irreversible way.”