To make things worse, Florence and Jake shared a past history, leaving Florence feeling betrayed and upset by Jake’s decision.
“I didn’t think we ended that badly,” Jake tells WHO of his and Florence’s previous “fling”.
“But, she [Florence] was definitely a woman scorned when I walked in [to Paradise].”
The pair “hooked up” following Florence’s appearance on Matty J’s season of The Bachelor.
“It was just back and forth banter, she does have a really good sense of humour and I feel that I do as well,” Jake says.
“The first time we actually caught up and met in person was after we did a Family Feud charity event and one thing led to another and we did spend the night with each other but then that’s sort of the only time we ever saw each other in person and then just the way we were talking it just wasn’t really going anywhere.”
Jake says that things just naturally fizzled between the pair.
“We just weren’t a good match at the time,” he says.
“We weren’t dating, we weren’t anything official, you know we did hook up and we were talking for a bit but then that stopped very quickly, which was a shame, we are still friends now because it finished filming quite a while ago.”
Despite their brief encounter before Bachelor In Paradise began filming, Jake admits that even then Florence wasn’t sure of his intentions.
“She didn’t know I was going into Bachelor In Paradise because she asked the question was I talking to her, [if] I wanted a safe bet in Bachelor In Paradise and I said ‘well look I’m not going in it’ because that’s not what I was there talking to her for so I think that’s the way it sort of ended, we stopped talking and the first time we spoke to each other was when I walked into Bachelor In Paradise.”
Although his time in Paradise has proven that he’s a drama magnet, the 31-year-old is adamant that he hates it.
“I hate drama. Drama is my biggest hate even though I find myself in it at the start which is the complete opposite of what I wanted,” he reveals.
Things came to a dramatic head in tonight’s episode when Florence threw her champagne on Jake after he revealed how well his date with Megan went.
“Yeah, but she missed,” Jake laughs of Florence’s attempt to throw her drink at him.
“I didn’t foresee that situation and I definitely didn’t want to hurt anyone so I did handle that wrong. If anything, I wanted her [Florence] to fight for me like I did for her, which she didn’t. She took that the wrong way and then she threw her champagne at me, but she missed. She got my arm.”
Flo doesn’t exactly see eye to eye with Jake over the whole situation, especially because he seemed to move on so quickly.
“I think it’s very unfair considering that the next day [after the first rose ceremony], he pretty much went on a date with Megan straight away,” Flo tells WHO.
“When he came back [from the date], he lied about the fact that they kissed and I was like ‘you were begging me for a rose and then you move on to the next girl and you make out with another girl like in two days’ so that’s why I decided not to fight for him at all, I was kind of done.”
Soon after the champagne incident, all of the bachelors and bachelorettes were called into a rose ceremony and things went from bad to worse when Mack Reid decided to pick Ali Oetjen over Leah Costa. Jake reveals that the boys had a plan for who they were going to pick and Mack mucked that up.
“We sort of thought we all knew who everyone was picking and I was picking Megan, that was 100 per cent but Mack at the start picking Ali stuffed everything up and as you can see down the line, we all start freaking out like holy shit, what are we doing now?” Jake says.
“So as it came down to Michael [Turnbull] and myself, I think there was Leah, Flo and Megan [left] and Michael started telling me under his breath that he’s going to pick Megan and my exact words were ‘do not pick Megan. I’m picking Megan. If you do it, I’ll kill you.’”
Mack’s decision at the beginning of the rose ceremony surprised everyone off and left the boys’ in a tough situation, says Jake.
“It threw Jarrod off, you know Jarrod was fuming and then as it went down the line, I knew that I was going to be giving the last rose and I definitely didn’t want to make an even tougher decision between Leah and Florence you know and that’s what Michael was trying to take away from me.”
Unfortunately for Flo, things didn’t rule in her favour with Michael picking Leah and Jake picking Megan. If she had her time again, Florence says that she would do things differently.
“Yeah! Send Jake home and keep Davey,” she says. “100 per cent!”
