Gabi Elnicki has claimed The Bachelor star Zach Shallcross lied about their off-camera agreement to keep their Fantasy-Suite sex a secret in order to protect his relationship with Kaity Biggar.

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"I am still recovering from After the Final Rose... but I'm getting through... I'm still in a place of healing right now," Gabi shared on the March 30 episode of the "Click Bait with Bachelor Nation" podcast.

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Zach went into Fantasy-Suite Week with a no-sex rule for his Final 3 bachelorettes: Gabi, Kaity and Ariel Frenkel.

While Zach stayed true to his word with Ariel, he and Gabi had sex during his second overnight date of the week in Thailand.

After The Bachelor 27 finale aired, Zach suggested to Us Weekly that Gabi had asked HIM to keep their sexual encounter a secret.

"In that moment, I told her, I was like, 'Okay, yes, this can be a secret,' and the guilt ate at me," Zach said on the "Here for the Right Reasons" podcast in a joint interview with Kaity.

"And thinking that there's an engagement right around the corner and I'm holding in a secret, like, I don't know, 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."

But Gabi claimed on "Click Bait" that Zach had asked HER to keep their intimate relationship a secret, only to change his mind the next day.

"I think the conversation [that night] was that we wanted to [have sex]. And, you know, it's going to become a he-said, she-said thing here, and I don't want to do that. Ultimately, at the end of the day, he has a relationship he's trying to protect," Gabi told "Click Bait" host Joe Amabile.

"And I've seen some of his interviews, and if he wants to look at things one way of, like, 'She asked [me] to keep things a secret,' I felt like he asked me that -- and I agreed. I said, 'Yes, I obviously want to keep this between us.'"

But Gabi said that at the end of the day, no matter how she or Zach recalls the event, "what happened, happened."

"I thought we were in a place where it was coming from a place of love, and I looked at this like way more than a TV show. And I felt like we had connected on that throughout the season of, 'What's going to happen after we leave this bubble? What's going to happen after the TV show?'" Gabi explained.

"And so I just felt like we had an agreement, 'This is going to be between us because this is our relationship.' And when he came to speak to me the next morning, I had no idea he was coming to my hotel room and I was completely blindsided. I was journaling!"

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Gabi said that even when producers put a microphone on her, she "didn't think anything of it."

And so when Zach approached her for a conversation before his Fantasy Suite with Kaity, Gabi was "totally caught off-guard."

Zach told Gabi that he was "falling in love" with her, but then he broke the news that he didn't want to see the fact they had sex a secret. Zach felt he owed it to the other bachelorettes to be fair, honest and transparent.

Gabi therefore said on the show she felt like she was wearing a "Scarlet Letter." She believed Zach was "clearing his conscience" at the expense of her heart, and she lost trust in him as a result.

"He had doubled-down on it being a secret that morning, before the camera crews came in. I said it on After the Final Rose: I remember I was brushing my teeth. He came up behind me, he kissed me on the back of the head, and he said, 'This is just between us.' And I said, 'Yes, this is just between us,'" Gabi alleged.

Gabi noted it was "probably the second or third time" she and Zach had said, "This is just between us, this is our relationship" from the start to the end of their Fantasy Suite date.

So when Zach mentioned how he didn't want to have any secrets weighing on his shoulders, Gabi told Joe that she actually thought he was letting her off the hook so that she could confide in her friends and have a support team.

"It left some room for interpretation," Gabi noted.

She apparently had no idea Zach was looking to spill specifics about their personal romance.

"What I was not aware of was the conversation being had with [The Bachelor host Jesse Palmer] and, you know, his interviews, where he was using my name and speaking in, what I think, was detail about what happened that caught me very off-guard watching it back," Gabi said.

Gabi said Zach's actions after their Fantasy Suite -- including calling himself a failure, crying about having gone back on his word, and shaming himself -- were "really mean" words, in her opinion.

And then Gabi clarified, "I knew Kaity knew because of what we talked about after the roses were given out."

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As The Bachelor viewers saw, once Zach gave out his Final 2 roses to Gabi and Kaity after Fantasy Suites and then walked his third-place finisher, Ariel out, Kaity muttered to Gabi under her breath, "I know you were the only one," seemingly referring to sex in the Fantasy Suites.

Gabi said watching The Bachelor back, she "didn't realize how much had been revealed" in Thailand at the time, and so she felt "extremely violated."

Gabi acknowledged she's not upset that Kaity knows about her sexual encounter with Zach given the girls are still "very close friends," but she thinks "some discretion could've been used" on Zach's part "when speaking about it" to others.

"That's where it hurts me, and the one person who knew about [Zach's no-sex] parameters was Ariel, and she wasn't informed, which was disappointing to me... She had no idea. She was standing at that Rose Ceremony just as confused as I was," Gabi explained.

"He was just speaking to Kaity [about it]."

While Zach seemed to think he was strengthening his relationship with Kaity by telling her the truth, Kaity admitted she felt disconnected and "distant" from Zach during their Fantasy Suite.

Kaity was "crushed" by the news and said she couldn't pretend to be happy. In fact, Kaity wished Zach hadn't told her about his relationships with the other women at all.

Kaity was even close to quitting the show, but she decided to follow her heart since she was already falling in love with The Bachelor star.

"I also think he could've asked Kaity, 'What are your expectations for this week? What do you want to know? What are your parameters?' But unfortunately, I think Zach made a lot of decisions for us that week, where we didn't have any say in it," Gabi shared.

"And I think that's disappointing because we are all adults."

Gabi suggested Zach should've had a private conversation with each of his Final 3 women and asked, "Where does our relationship need to go?"

Gabi thought that approach would've been "much more impactful," but instead, she said Zach essentially dictated what was or was not going to happen in the bedroom.

"I understand it's his journey, but at the same time, it's my life as well... I'm also making a life-changing decision. So there needed to be more dialogue there, and unfortunately there wasn't," Gabi explained.

But putting herself in Zach's shoes, Gabi said she understood the type of pressure Zach was under as the franchise's leading man and she didn't set out to "sh-t on" him during her "Click Bait" interview.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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