Susie Evans rejected Clayton Echard at the final rose ceremony on season 26 of The Bachelor. He professed his love to her, but she did not feel the same way back, and she ended their relationship, leaving Clayton as a single man following a season of ups and downs. The finale was filmed back in December, and after it aired on March 15, Clayton and Susie appeared on After the Final Rose to update viewers on what happened in the months since.
Clayton revealed that Susie reached out to him after they left Iceland. He said he did not expect it at all. After reconnecting, Susie and Clayton started dating, and she confirmed he was her boyfriend. “I really just had to chooes myself in that moment [in Iceland],” she explained. “I didn’t have all the answers I needed. We were no longer in a place where we could facilitate the conversations we needed to have to reestablish that trust and everything we needed for a strong relationship. I had to take a step away and I had to let Clayton go. I had to choose myself in that moment and it allowed me to take a better look and get the answers we both needed.”
Susie also said that she’s in love with Clayton. “I can confidently say, yes,” she confirmed. “He’s incredible. We all make mistakes and we both made mistakes on this journey but we both have so much love for each other.” Clayton also revealed that he quit his job and is moving to Virginia to move in with Susie.
Susie first left The Bachelor during her fantasy suite date, which aired during the March 8 episode. She told Clayton she could not move forward with him after finding out that he had slept with two other women (Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia) and told them both that he loved them, too. Clayton was upset that Susie didn’t tell him this was a dealbreaker beforehand. He promised that he loved her “the most” and said he may have done things differently if he’d known. But Susie insisted that if Clayton really felt it would be her in the end then he wouldn’t have been intimate with anyone else.
Their disagreement led to a blow-up fight, and ended with Clayton sending Susie home as she tried to apologize for how it all went down. Clayton then continued on his journey to find love with Gabby and Rachel, introducing both women to his family. At that point, though, he realized he still had feelings for Susie, and made another plea to get her back. Susie agreed to come back and meet Clayton’s family herself to give their relationship another shot. At that point, Clayton dumped Rachel and Gabby to pursue Susie, but by the end, she still wasn’t fully on the same page.
