N o w - H o l l y w o o d . b l o g s p o t .c o m

It's been quite a week for Jason Mesnick.

More than 17 million viewers watched the single dad get down on one knee and propose to Dallas beauty Melissa Rycroft on the two-hour season finale of The Bachelor, only to dump her like 45 seconds later on the "After the Final Rose" special.

Mesnick then confessed he still had feelings for Michigan department store buyer Molly Malaney - to the dismay of Rycroft, who said in her first interview after the finale that Jason lied about Molly to her on more than one occasion.

The shocking events will be hotly debated for some time, but Jason and Molly are brushing off the haters and looking very happy on the cover of People.

In an exclusive sit-down interview with the celeb news magazine, Jason again defends his decision to dump Melissa Rycroft in front of the ABC cameras.

"That was part of the deal. I signed up for this. Your relationship is - good and bad - in front of everybody," Mesnick lied to People through his teeth.

In her interview, as well as her personal emails to Jason, Melissa Rycroft did corroborrate The Bachelor star's statement that they drifted apart shortly after they returned from New Zealand and tried to resume their normal lives.

"After we got back into the real world, we had less to talk about, and I didn't know why," says Jason, who couldn't stop thinking about the girl he left behind.

Turns out Molly Malaney shared similar feelings.

"After the finale I thought he made the wrong decision and I was so upset. I was totally shocked," Malaney says. "I thought, Gosh, it would be so awesome if he called me up and was like 'I made a mistake, I want you back.'"

"Never in a million years did I think it would happen."