Chris Brown and Rihanna

R & B supercouple Chris Brown and Rihanna suddenly found their relationship thrust into the headlines when Brown was arrested on suspicion of attacking a woman widely reported to be Rihanna. While various celebrity web sites, citing sources near both Brown and Rihanna, reported details of an argument in Brown’s car in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the fact is that right now, nobody really knows exactly what happened except those two, and neither is talking to anyone but the police.

Brown and Rihanna scrupulously avoided discussing their relationship in the past, which makes what went wrong even more of a mystery. Last fall, shortly before a show in Australia, Rihanna was interviewed by Melbourne radio station Fox 101.9 and talked about Brown, but would not confirm they were anything more than friends. “We are very good friends, we are cool, we are best friends, we hang out all the time, and now we’re doing a tour together,” she told the station.

Brown also did not speak much about his relationship with Rihanna. But in 2007, he told Giant Magazine that his stepfather used to hit his mother. “He made me terrified all the time, terrified like I had to pee on myself. I remember one night he made her nose bleed. I was crying and thinking, ‘I’m just gonna go crazy on him one day…’ I hate him to this day,” he told the magazine.