Last we heard from LeAnn Rimes, she was maybe/probably having her lawyers issue “bitch is slandering me” warnings to Eddie Cibrian’s estranged (and soon to be ex) wife Brandi Glanville. Considering LeAnn still hasn’t denied that report, I think she really did it – I think she really had her lawyers threaten Brandi. LeAnn is hardcore. Don’t believe me? She’s doubling-down on her relationship with Eddie Cibrian, admitting that they had an affair, but that the ends justify the means:

LeAnn Rimes believes everything happens for a reason.

“I did one of the most selfish things that I possibly could do, in hurting someone else,” the country superstar says in the new issue of PEOPLE, speaking for the first time about the end of her 7-year marriage last year, following an affair with married actor Eddie Cibrian.

“I take responsibility for everything I’ve done. I hate that people got hurt,” says Rimes. “But I don’t regret the outcome.”

Rimes, 27, who is now in a committed relationship with Cibrian, 36 (their respective divorces will be final soon), says they became friends while shooting the TV movie Northern Lights in November 2008, and it wasn’t until several months later that their relationship “tipped over.”

“It was very emotionally driven,” says the singer, whose new single “Swingin'” off her upcoming covers album Lady and Gentlemen is out June 14. “I never once thought what I was doing was okay.”

She says she and Dean Sheremet, 29 – a former dancer who is now a chef at Nobu in New York City and has been dating photographer Sarah Silver since last year – worked on their relationship after her infidelity became public, but ultimately decided that “it wasn’t a marriage that fulfilled either one of us,” says Rimes.

She adds, “I was out of balance. My marriage was out of balance. There was something missing.”

But Rimes despises being called a “home wrecker” – because Cibrian and Glanville’s marriage was already fractured too.

She says, “The hardest thing to hear is someone call either of us a homewrecker because we didn’t walk into a perfectly happy marriage and ruin it.”

The star is refusing to rule out another wedding in the future, but insists, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know it holds Eddie. I’m really happy. I’ve moved on, and I hope there can be some forgiveness and acceptance.”

[From People and Contact Music]

Call her crazy, but I kind of like that statement. If she had flat-out lied and played the “we didna do nothing!” card, she would have been called out for her bullsh-t. If she seemed like she was too blasé about the whole thing, we would have called her a psychopath. She struck the right cord, somewhere between apologetic, strident and explanatory. She and Eddie both cheated on their spouses, she felt bad, she’s sorry people got hurt, but both their marriages were already in trouble, and whatever. Eh.

Now, do I think she’s genuine? No. I think she fell in love with Eddie when he was still married and stringing her along, and she set out to systematically destroy his marriage. I think she had a plan to get Eddie, and she carried it out, and she’s still carrying it out. This interview – this admission and apologetic tone – is part of The Plan. Now, I do believe that LeAnn and Dean Sheremet’s marriage wasn’t all that. I think they were good friends, and they had built their marriage on that. But – just my opinion – Dean was and is afraid of vagina, and LeAnn probably had her first orgasm with Eddie. She wasn’t going to let that go, you know? As for the state of Brandi and Eddie’s marriage – well, who knows? He was screwing around on Brandi before he even met LeAnn. But Brandi stuck with him, and I would imagine Brandi would have stayed had LeAnn not gone out of her way to make a play for Eddie publicly.

By the way, do you want to see their first uncomfortable public kiss unfold? Eddie seems really creepy here, and LeAnn is all “Bitch, I’m just trying to eat my fro-yo!”