After Nate implies that George knows why the wedding ended, Frankie confronts George immediately. George admits that on the night at the manor, after Frankie went to bed, he got very drunk and high while drinking with Nate, Frankie’s brothers, and their friends. As they traded stories about Frankie, George took pleasure in knowing intimate details about her that Nate did not, and he deliberately emphasized how deeply he understood her.

George explains that the conversation escalated until Nate directly asked whether George was in love with Frankie. George answered honestly and told Nate that he loved Frankie in a way Nate never could. George insists he never intended to stop the wedding and believed he would endure Frankie marrying Nate if that truly made her happy, but his confession clearly helped push Nate to leave.

Frankie then learns that George’s feelings did not begin this week. George says he has been in love with her for a long time and that he even took an internship in Edmonton because living with Frankie without asking for more had become unbearable. He claims he tried to tell Frankie three years earlier during the wildfire drive, but Frankie argues that saying “I love you” was not the same as clearly telling her he was in love with her, and that he never truly gave her the chance to respond.

The full emotional cost of George’s secrecy crashes over Frankie. She realizes that while she spent two months blaming herself for Nate’s abandonment and unraveling in pain, George knew a major reason the wedding had collapsed and said nothing. George apologizes repeatedly, says he tried and failed to reach Nate afterward, and begs Frankie to tell him how to make things right.

When George says he wants everything from Frankie and wants her to love him too, Frankie sees how beautiful a life with him could be. But she is also overwhelmed by the scale of what he hid and by her own fear of losing herself in another person, shaped by what she has seen in her parents and family. Crying, Frankie tells George that he matters more to her than anyone, but she cannot do this with him now.