Hayden Panettiere detailed the first time ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson got physical in her debut memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
“I hear it before I feel it, the unmistakable sound of an open-hand slap,” Panettiere, 36, wrote in the book, released on Tuesday, May 19. “There’s the burning on my cheek, like I’m on fire. There’s ringing in my head.”
Prior to the incident, Panettiere wrote that Hickerson was screaming in her face. The actress claimed it was rage “like I’ve never seen before.” Panettiere grabbed a pairing knife nearby, but threw it to the side before he hit her.
“None of it happened, at least for me. If I think about it, it’s real. But it wasn’t real,” Panettiere wrote. “I can play tough and will it away and it’s gone. Buck it up, then wipe it off the whiteboard and delete it from the tapes. I love this man and this wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him, not in a million years.”
Following that first incident, “the slaps become hits,” Panettiere wrote.
“One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks. Another day he screams at me to run as far as I can in five seconds because I’ll need a head start before he throws the remote control at me,” she claimed. “This is a man who doesn’t miss, I think. And he doesn’t.”
Panettiere and Hickerson were first linked in 2018. He was arrested the following year following an alleged domestic violence incident against the actress. Hickerson was charged with felony domestic violence and was ordered to stay away from Panettiere. Those charges were eventually dropped.
He was arrested again in 2020 after another domestic violence altercation against Panettiere. Hickerson ultimately served 33 days in prison, was placed on four years probation and ordered to pay a $500 fine.
Panettiere wrote that her friends and family were concerned that she was “in a dangerous situation” during her relationship with Hickerson.
“What I never told them was that the abuse I’d endured didn’t feel as bad as the thought of being alone,” she wrote.
Hickerson told TMZ ahead of the book’s release that he and Panettiere have “a mutual respect thing” now. “We’re just good buddies,” he added, calling This Is Me an “incredible” read. However, Hickerson did admit that there was one story he asked Panettiere not to include in her book.
“There’s a story where I was drunk,” he recalled. “Hayden was standing across and I had a phone in my hand and I said, ‘I’ll give you 10 seconds to run as fast as you can before I throw it at you.’”
Panettiere reflected on her relationship with Hickerson in her Us Weekly cover story, published earlier this month.
“It was brutal. It was traumatic. It was emotional. It was important for me to word that experience properly,” she said. “I needed to believe that it happened for a reason.”
Panettiere continued, “For something so horrible to happen, the only thing that I could think of to make it all worth it, was [to] let people know that they’re not alone and help people.”
This Is Me is out now.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
