We all know what happened. Zach Shallcross put his own selfish needs above everyone else. After vowing there would be “no sex of any kind” in the Fantasy Suites, the Season 27 Bachelor and Gabi Elnicki had sex. And even though he’d promised to keep it just “between us,” Zach made a point of telling everyone. (Except for Ariel Frenkel, who had to find out about it when she saw it on TV.)
According to Us Weekly, Zach discussed his actions on the Here for the Right Reasons podcast. “In that moment, I told her… ‘OK, yes, this can be a secret,’” Zach said. “And the guilt ate at me.” So he made a promise in the heat of the moment but felt free to break later it to clear his own conscience. If I were Gabi, I would feel terribly used.
After breaking his own self-imposed rule for Fantasy Suites, “I felt immense guilt,” the Season 27 Bachelor admitted. “Thinking that there’s an engagement right around the corner and I’m holding in a secret . . . that is the scariest thing. That’s not who I am as a man. That’s not what I want to be — to hold secrets and not give the full truth. Obviously, it caused a lot of pain though, and I don’t take away from that.”
He added, “I hope Gabi knows that, like, the intentions were as pure as they could be, and I did not wanna hurt her on that.” So he basically painted Gabi as some kind of “temptress” he couldn’t resist, and then broke his promise to keep it private.
As Gabi said on her way to the Rose Ceremony, “It feels like he’s cleared his conscience at the expense of my heart.”
Confronting Zach at the After the Final Rose, Gabi reminded him, “It was consensual, and it was what we wanted. We decided that it was going to be between us. [That night] you said, ‘This is just between us.’”
The Vermont native added, “I thought it was love. I thought it was more than a TV show. I get it, sex sells, but now I’ve become a narrative.” And sadly, the night the show aired, Gabi started receiving hateful messages on social media, blaming her for Zach breaking his promise.
Initially, Zach’s final choice, Kaity Biggar, was “crushed” by his confession, saying, “I could’ve went [sic] without hearing that.” But again, the tech exec relieved his guilty conscience at the cost of Kaity’s feelings.
But now that Kaity has that Neil Lane rock on her finger, everything’s peachy. She even claimed that she and Gabi will remain friends. I wonder if Gabi will get an invitation to the wedding. But then that’s reportedly two years away. She should be long over Zach by then, especially if she meets someone new. You deserve better, Gabi!
And now that all the drama is (hopefully) behind them, Kaity is defending her new fiancé. “I wasn’t in his shoes at all. I think he has such an amazing heart, and he just didn’t wanna muddy the waters,” she said. “It did happen…But in Bachelor world, things don’t always go as planned.”
“We hit a hurdle for sure,” the travel nurse added. “But in the end, we came out stronger.”
TELL US – DID IT SURPRISE YOU WHEN ZACH PICKED KAITY AT THE END OR DID YOU SEE IT COMING? DO YOU THINK IT WAS OKAY FOR ZACH TO BREAK HIS PROMISE TO GABI THAT “THIS IS JUST BETWEEN US?”
[ABC/Craig Sjodin]