Jeremiah Reveals Where He Messed Up with Huda (Exclusive)

Jeremiah Brown definitely has some regrets about how he handled his relationship with Huda Mustafa in the Love Island USA villa.

The 25-year-old was dumped from the Fiji villa on the June 22 episode of the Peacock dating series, just days after his relationship with Huda, 24, came to a fiery conclusion after days of ups and downs.

He opted to recouple with bombshell Iris Kendall instead of sticking with Huda, but found more of a platonic connection with the 25-year-old, and was just starting to feel sparks with bombshell Adreina Santos when he was voted off by the other boys, which he tells PEOPLE felt like a “betrayal.”

Looking back, Jeremiah has three major regrets when it comes to how he handled his connection with Huda, who he was coupled up with from day 1 in the villa.

The first thing he says he regrets is “getting intimate so soon, so fast” with Huda.

“That definitely — we skipped a lot of steps, and threw us into, or threw her headspace into a relationship, and I was just trying to enjoy being coupled up,” he says of their decision to have sex early on in the series.

He also regrets “not telling her who I am in a relationship.”

“That’s where I f—– up,” Jeremiah admits. “Because she asked me, ‘Who are you in a relationship?’ And I just talked about everything I did in my [past] relationship, and then she expected that the next day. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, maybe [I should] not say all these cute things I do in a relationship [so soon].'”

Jeremiah also wishes he would’ve been vocal about his desire to “slow things down” with Huda.

In retrospect, he says that in the moments he was “feeling overwhelmed, instead of trying to be Superman,” he wishes he’d spoken his mind a little bit more.

“I was just kind of doing too much, too soon, because I really liked her, and I was like, ‘Okay, you know what? She deserves this, for lack of better words, so let me go try to do all the things.'”

In the outside world, though, he says it would usually take him “months to get” to the point he was at with Huda after just days, which is also how he knows he should’ve behaved differently.

He knows that he bares part of the responsibility for how things escalated between him and Huda.

“I should have nipped it in the bud and I didn’t, so I can definitely own that,” he admits. “I should have.”

When he learns that Huda is being labeled the villain of the season, though, he’s not necessarily totally in agreement.

“It doesn’t bring me any joy,” he says. But, as he points out, “She did say a lot of things about me and to me that … aren’t okay, and, just for lack of better words, hurt my feelings.”

“Like, oh yeah, it hurt, because I really cared about her. So when she’s in the shower saying this and that to her friends, and talking and she runs away and says this and that, I’m just like, ‘Damn. I would never do that to you.'”

The final straw for him with Huda was when she cussed him out in front of the whole villa, he says.

During one of their last conversations as a couple, Jeremiah told Huda he was “not trying to get you to like me,” which she spun around and understood as him telling her he didn’t “care” if she liked him.

“She literally just changed the words in 10 seconds,” he recalls.

“And then [she] said, ‘Have a good life, brother,’ and walked away, and then, ‘F him,’ over there cussing me out to everybody, and then I know they’re going through hell and I’m going through hell. So I’m just like, ‘Okay, yeah. This has got to end.'”

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New episodes of Love Island USA drop every day except Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Peacock.