The Bachelorette's eleventh-season runner-up Nick Viall confesses he absolutely didn't think there was a chance Kaitlyn Bristowe was going to reject him at the final Rose Ceremony.

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And there's one major reason why: Bristowe said, "I love you," to Viall more than once.

"I felt very fortunate at the end for the validation [Kaitlyn] gave me," Viall told former "The Bacheloretee star Ali Fedotowsky in a video posted on her blog.

When asked flat out if he told Bristowe he loved her, Viall replied, "Yeah, we told each other -- a bunch of times."

"I was really lucky, I mean, obviously there's the fantasy suite, but I was also really lucky that she invested a lot of extra time. We really enjoyed our private time together. At the time, I was very surprised because she's not allowed to say [I love you] even, technically, in private," he said.

Fedotowsky explained when she was the Bachelorette, show producers demanded she not tell any guy she loved him in case she changed her mind.

"Yeah, so knowing it's not an unwritten rule, it's an actual rule..." Viall began.

"So she had told me in the fantasy suite and she had told me [I love you] after I met her parents. So, again, what can you do in that environment? Do you say, 'Do you really? Are you sure?' No, you're just going to say, 'Okay, I'm going to trust that that's how they feel.'"

While Viall owns the fact he was "very much" in love with Bristowe and she's "a great person," she broke his heart.

"Obviously, I wish she would've handled a lot of things different towards the end, but I know Kaitlyn is someone who very much lives in the moment and maybe to a fault sometimes... It sucked... I never thought in a million years [I'd get dumped]," the software salesman explained.

Viall considered contacting Bristowe because he had her phone number thanks to their pre-existing relationship, but he ultimately decided to just move on with his life.

"We didn't communicate at all. The days following sucked. You wake up with that gut-wrenching feeling, but every day gets a little bit better," Viall noted.

The runner-up doesn't regret going on the show, but he admitted it's "hard to say" whether he'd do it all over again.

"You can't regret every risk that doesn't work out. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't feel foolish. I'm the guy -- I feel like I'm now this really unfortunate Trivial Pursuit question -- the guy who just takes second all the time," Viall laughed.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.