Taylor Ann Green Needs a 'Lot of Forgiveness' from Olivia Flowers After Austen Kroll Hookup (Exclusive)

On last week’s episode of Southern Charm, Taylor Ann Green admitted to bestie Olivia Flowers that she suggested to Flowers’ ex Austen Kroll that they try dating.

While Green, 28, and Kroll, 36, decided against it, the reveal came as a surprise to Flowers.

Flowers, 30, tells PEOPLE she wanted to navigate this season with Kroll “as friends,” but “it was tricky.”

“A lot of different things happened that shifted the dynamic of the group and changed a lot of friendships,” she says.

Flowers straight-up asked Green on last week’s episode whether anything happened between her and Kroll to make them reconsider their relationship. “[We] never hooked up, never anything,” Green claimed. “Swear on my life.”

Eventually, Green learned that Flowers and Kroll did get physical, and she says she found herself in “hard disbelief.”

“And then the more and more it made its way into our inner circle of friends, the more it had to be addressed,” Flowers continues. “It was definitely a chain link of events that took place.”

Green acknowledges how relationship with Kroll escalated. “I think after the breakup, we both just really leaned on each other a lot more,” she tells PEOPLE, referring to her split from Shep Rose. “We just really leaned on each other and we grew our friendship to be tighter. I really value him as a older brother to me. It just was comfortable.”

The Day Chaser brand representative knows she hurt Flowers in the process of growing closer to Kroll to the point where they ended up getting physical.

“I take full blame for everything that transpired and how I handled the situation and the things I said and how I acted,” Green tells PEOPLE. “That was really tough. I think that there's a lot of forgiveness that can be had. That's a big thing this year — there's a lot of forgiveness and tough love.”

Green and Flowers haven’t been able to fully repair their friendship since Green and Kroll hooked up.

“We're certainly not in the place we were this time last year,” Flowers acknowledges. “I don't necessarily know if we'll ever get back to that place. She recently went through something very tragic and difficult, and I reached out then because that's really all that matters — none of the other drama. But there's a lot more distance there with us.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Southern Charm airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.