'The Bachelor' Star Gabi Opens Up About Zach's Invasion of Privacy: 'Still Getting Over All of It'

Gabi Elnicki is still processing her heartbreak after getting dumped by Zach Shallcross on The Bachelor.

While appearing on fellow Bachelor alum Kaitlyn Bristowe's Off the Vine podcast this week, Elnicki, 25, opened up about her thoughts on season 27 and why she's "still getting over all of it."

"I am not somebody that holds grudges towards people, I don't hold resentment, I don't hold anger," she said on Thursday's episode. "Do I think I'm going to be pals with Zach? No. Am I still angry and hurt? Absolutely."

As Bachelor Nation fans may recall, Shallcross, 26, made a rule not to engage in sex of any kind with his three finalists in an attempt to keep things simple during Fantasy Suites week. However, that plan backfired when he and Elnicki chose to be intimate, and then, in an effort to clear his conscience, Shallcross told his now-fiancée Kaity Biggar that he'd had sex with the account executive.

Shallcross later called breaking his own no-sex policy with Elnicki the "biggest mistake I could've done" before choosing Biggar over Elnicki in the finale. During the After the Final Rose special, Elnicki said it was "extremely violating that the entire nation knows everything" because of Shallcross's desire to be honest.

Despite everything she went through, Elnicki said she still hopes the best for her ex and Biggar, 28.

"He is going to hopefully marry one of my close friends and I plan to stay in Kaity's life. And, you know, for me to hold hate towards him and anger and resentment — I'm hoping I can let that go at some point," she shared on the podcast. "But I do think that, at this point, I still feel violated. And I'm still getting over all of it."

"It's difficult because I only want what's best for Kaity, but I don't think that Zach is a bad person. I don't think that he is a vindictive, mean person. I don't think he meant to hurt me," she continued. "I think he just did because he wanted to save his relationship with Kaity — that's a person he loves and he wants to spend his life with. And so I can't fault him for that."

Elnicki added: "I'm upset and I'm disappointed and I have a lot of emotions, and some of them don't necessarily have words, but I want the best for her. And so, if he makes her happy and he respects her, and he shows her, you know, love and he protects her, then I'm happy for them."

The Vermont native also noted that if Shallcross's behavior ever changed toward Biggar, she'd be the first to raise concerns to her friend.

"If I ever see that not happening, I'll be like, 'Kaity, you need to walk away,' just like I would do with any one of my friends and whoever they're dating," she said, before acknowledging how she's actively "trying to separate myself and my experience from judging their relationship from this point forward."

"It's gonna take time," she pointed out. "It's awkward, right?"

Elnicki also addressed Shallcross's decision to publicly share how they were intimate in the Fantasy Suites and why she wished he had handled it a bit differently.

"I think the repercussions of it, of exposing me on the level that he did, I wish he thought that through more," she explained. "There was a way to have a conversation and say, 'I was intimate with someone this week' or 'I was intimate in some form this week.'"

"What hurt me was it wasn't just to Kaity. It was to [host] Jesse [Palmer], it was to all of his interviews, time and time again," she continued. "I could play a drinking game with how many times he said 'I had sex with Gabi' — using my name."

"Watching it back, I was like, 'What? Are you kidding? Could we not leave any room for imagination?'" she recalled. "It was just so explicit of what had happened and using my name, time and time again, that hurt me and that's what I was trying to address at After the Final Rose ... I knew the secret had been shared, I got the gist of that based on his speech and my conversation with Kaity afterwards, but I didn't know of the extent of what was shared."

Asked if she's "over" Zach now, Elnicki admitted the situation was a bit complex — especially after watching the season back.

"I think I thought I was over him. But when you leave the bubble, you are saying goodbye for good, right? You can't call them, you can't text them. I'm not hitting him up on Instagram," she explained. "He's with one of my best friends and I knew they were together. And I wouldn't have wanted to reach out to him anyways."

"But then watching it back was definitely more difficult because I saw it from all points of view. And I also was like, 'Wait, what is [this]? What is true? What is not true?'" she continued. "Because I knew my truth and it's like, 'Is any of this fabricated?' You just have so many questions that come up from watching it back, which, I think, was difficult. But for me, I don't think I'm over how violated I felt by the end of the show and how hurt I felt. But I'm over Zach. … I don't know. Maybe I'm not over him and I'm just saying that."

This was Elnicki's latest podcast appearance. Last week, the reality star appeared on the Click Bait with Bachelor Nation podcast, where she revealed that she correctly suspected Shallcross wouldn't be proposing to her in the end — but saw it through for her friend's sake.

"I thought about my relationship with Kaity and if I were in her shoes and it was clear, Kaity was the choice," she told Joe Amabile. "Kaity had been the choice. But if I had left, she could've felt like she was the choice by default. And she was truly the choice."

"I didn't want her to feel any kind of doubt when proposed to her and she watched it all back," she added.