Rihanna: Backlash won't snarl my love for Chris Brown

Rihanna and Chris Brown's rekindled romance has outraged a lot of fans - but the pop starlet is making no apologies for getting back together with her once-abusive beau.

"I decided it was more important for me to be happy - I wasn't going to let anybody's opinion get in the way of that," Rihanna, 24, told Rolling Stone in the issue out Friday. "Even if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it."

The on-again couple ended their relationship in 2009 after Brown brutally assaulted the Barbados-born beauty.

In the magazine, Rihanna said the pair's relationship is "different now."

"We talk about s---," she said. "We value each other ... He made a mistake and he's paid his dues. He's paid so much. And I know that's not a place he would ever want to go back to."

That said, Rihanna said that Brown, 23, "doesn't have the luxury of f------ up again," and if he does, she won't tolerate it the second time around.

"That's just not an option," the songstress said. "I can't say that nothing else will ever go wrong. But I'm pretty solid in the knowing that he's disgusted by that. And I wouldn't have gone this far if I ever thought that was a possibility."