Susie seemed to dodge a bullet during The Bachelor Fantasy Suites. After calmly telling Clayton she was uncomfortable moving forward with an engagement if he was in love with the other women (yes) and had slept with them (yes again), Clayton morphed into the Gaslight Monster. But could Susie come back on The Bachelor? If I was Susie, I'd have gotten in that SUV and never turned back. But this is The Bachelor. And just like when someone dies on a scripted TV show but their body isn't shown, you can't believe a contestant's really gone for good until all is said and done.

As a clue about Susie's possible return, let's look at one particularly relevant example from a past Bachelor season — Madi Prewett on Peter Weber's season. Similar to Susie, she struggled with the fact that Peter slept with the other women during the Fantasy Suites (especially due to her Christian beliefs and that she was waiting until marriage to have sex). She broke up with him in Australia on their final date. But when Chris Harrison visited her at home to tell her that Peter's engagement with Hannah Ann was over, she seemed interested in pursuing things with Peter once again. So Peter and Madi left the "After the Final Rose" special with Barb's ire and the promise that they'd tried to make things work (dear reader: they didn't).

Even if Clayton is competing with Peter for the title of Messiest Bachelor, Susie and Clayton are not Madi and Peter. But contestants come back all the time after they've "left" the show. And the preview for the finale gave a slight hint that Susie could come back when it showed Jesse Palmer knocking on a hotel room door. Was that Clayton's door? Or, did Palmer, like Harrison before him, take it upon himself to go visit Susie?

Whether she's at home or still in Iceland, one scenario where I could see Palmer visiting Susie is if Rachel and Gabby both (rightfully) dump Clayton. The preview shows that the remaining two women are not pleased with his admission that he loves both of them and has been "intimate" with both of them. So could Palmer go to Susie and tell her that Clayton's single?

Another scenario is Clayton realizes he loves Susie more than the two other women and goes after her. Considering how he handled his breakup with Susie, I doubt he'd come to this conclusion all on his own (like Pilot Pete, it would probably take Rachel and Gabby leaving his ass). But he did tell Susie, "With you, I feel way different than I feel with somebody else. And I can promise you, like, that it's very special where we're at," which seemed code for — "I love you more than Rachel and Gabby... even though I just told both of them I love them."

For her sake, I hope that Susie is done with the show and Clayton. And she may be if she's not as into Clayton as he is into her. After he told her he loved her, she replied, "Well, I, like, appreciate you telling me." Oof. She also didn't say she loved him back, instead saying, "You know how I feel. Like, I adore you." So that — plus the way that Clayton responded to her mature admission that she doesn't feel comfortable saying "yes" to an engagement if he's sleeping with other women — could mean she has no desire to come back.

After all, in the car on her way out she seemed to know her worth: "I just thought that he would have had more compassion for me in the end, to be honest. Regardless of what kind of love at this point, I just thought we would have been better at getting through that conversation kindly."

But then again, her hesitation to say, "I love you," to Clayton could've been all because of the other women. So maybe if Clayton came back, said he loved her most, and pleaded with her to take him back... maybe she would? Plus, on social media, Susie has been silent since last night's episode. She's posted nothing on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter although she had been active in her IG Stories following "The Women Tell All" episode on Monday. After Tuesday's episode, she did like tweets celebrating Gabby and Rachel (so clearly, no hard feelings there), but nothing about Clayton.

If Susie does come back, I hope it's only to defend herself against the way he treated her. But don't underestimate The Bachelor's power of sucking people back in.

Images: ABC