Kevin Federline said his wedding to Britney Spears almost didn’t happen after he discovered her on the phone with her ex, Justin Timberlake, the night before their nuptials.
Federline, 47, reveals more details of his tumultuous relationship with Spears, to whom he was married from 2004 to 2007, in his upcoming memoir, You Thought You Knew.
“There were a couple of times early on where I could tell Britney still had some unfinished business with Justin Timberlake,” he writes in the memoir seen by The Independent. “It didn’t come up often, but it lingered, like a ghost in the background of our relationship.”
One of those times was the night before he and Spears, now 43, were to wed.
The two were staying at a hotel in Santa Monica, California, when Federline couldn’t find his bride. When a tearful Spears returned to their room, she admitted she had been speaking to Timberlake, whom she famously dated from 1999 to 2002.
Spears and Timberlake's relationship blossomed quickly in the late 1990s and early 2000s as their respective pop careers took off. They broke up in 2002 and proceeded to take jabs at each other through their music; he released “Cry Me A River” that same year, while she released “Everytime” in 2003. Spears then started dating her backup dancer, Federline, a year later.
“She said she needed to call him, to end one chapter of her life before starting a new one,” Federline writes. “You can imagine my shock, the night before we were supposed to get married. I told her straight up, ‘If you’re not ready to do this, we don’t have to. We don’t need to get married. I’m happy with what we have.’”
Federline recalls insisting to Spears that they didn’t need to get married in that moment — five months after they got engaged — that they could take time to assess what they really wanted.
“She just wanted closure with him, to end things on good terms,” he writes. “She said they hadn’t talked much since everything went down between them. And I believed her. At least, I wanted to.”
The two went ahead with their wedding, but Federline could sense that something was still off.
“Even after the wedding, I could tell she hadn’t fully moved on,” he writes. “It wasn’t like she was constantly bringing him up, but it came up enough. I could see that part of her heart still had ties to him. At the time, I chalked it up to her needing closure. I wasn’t mad. I understood. That’s what happens when someone was a big part of your life for so long.
“But now, looking back, especially after hearing what she said in her book, I realize it was deeper than that,” he continues. “She never really got over him. She might’ve loved me, but there was always something there with Justin that she couldn’t let go of.
“Being in love with someone still hanging on to someone else—you feel it, even if they don’t say it. It’s not something you can compete with. It’s just there, like this invisible wall between you. And that night before our wedding, when she was on the phone with him, I think I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
Federline and Spears were married in an intimate California wedding in September 2004 after their initial plans for a large ceremony were leaked to the press. Federline was 26, while Spears was 22.
Shortly after they wed, they welcomed their son, Sean Preston, followed about a year later by their son, Jayden James. At the time, Federline had two children with his ex-fiancée, Shar Jackson.
Federline and Spears remained married until she filed for divorce, which was finalized in 2007.
He details the whirlwind rise and fall of their relationship and its aftermath in You Thought You Knew, which hits shelves October 21.
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