Love Island USA‘s Charlie Felt ‘Sick’ Seeing Hannah and Pepe’s Date After Being Sent Home: ‘It Should Have Been Me’

Charlie was voted off the island when fans chose to couple Hannah up with bombshell Pepe, hours after he and Hannah decided to pursue their connection

Charlie Georgio wasn’t expecting his journey on Love Island USA to end the way it did.

The 27-year-old sat down with PEOPLE after he was shockingly dumped from the villa in the June 15 episode of the hit dating show. When he and Hannah Fields had just professed their feelings for one another hours earlier, Charlie says he never imagined he would end the night packing his bags.

“We had a beautiful conversation,” he recalls. “It was like meeting someone again, but on a deeper level. I’m on a high. We’re both on a high. We’re like giddy children again. We go downstairs, and I honestly thought when [host] Ariana [Madix] showed up, it was going to be a girls re-coupling, where the girls choose. So I had this feeling like, ‘Okay. Wow, dude. You’ve done it. If this happens, I believe she’ll choose me.’ But then the voting thing happened.”

From left: Charlie Georgio; Hannah Fields; Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez.Ben Symons/Peacock,Kim Nunneley/Peacock (2)

Charlie explains that the way he was sent home caught him off guard because he finally felt stable in his connection with Hannah.

Charlie was left on the chopping block when viewers chose to couple up Hannah and new bombshell Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez, leaving his fellow islanders to choose between him, Taylor Williams and Huda Mustafa. When they ultimately voted him off, Charlie admits he was “absolutely devastated.”

“It was a really brutal way to go, so I’ve just been kind of processing it all,” he shares. “I think, as everybody saw, the way in which it happened was just not nice, to kind of have that moment with Hannah where we’ve been through the last few days of this up and down, ‘Am I losing her? Will I get her back?’ She’s gone off of someone else, and then she comes back, and then we have this beautiful conversation where you think, ‘Okay, this is it. This is going to be the beginning of our Love Island journey.’”

“When the votes happened, I knew in my heart, I just knew I was the easy vote,” he adds. “I fought. I really did fight, because I knew that they hadn’t seen what had just happened, and this was my last chance to at least show them. I don’t even think it went into their heads at the time, but I really just didn’t want to give up.”

Charlie says knowing Hannah was with “that very guy that I was competing with” made it harder to leave.

“It’s not fair,” he says before confessing that he has struggled to watch Hannah move on with Pepe.

“I’ll be honest with you — I accidentally saw a clip that they went on a date after, and it just made me feel a little bit sick,” Charlie continues. “At the end of the day, what people have to understand is it’s raw, the way in which it happened. I felt she chose me, and now she’s with him. I want to watch my friends, but the truth is, I don’t want to see Hannah and Pepe go on their journey now, because I can’t help but feel there’s a part of me that feels it should have been me.”

For now, Charlie plans on skipping through the episodes so he doesn’t have to see that relationship because “it’s just too raw for me.”

“I think you ask any human being, ‘Would you be able to watch the person that you’ve shared feelings for, shared feelings with, an intimate journey, and then watch them just continue that journey with somebody else?’” he notes. “That guy gets to wake up with her. He gets to go to sleep next to her. He gets to make her breakfast now, and it is what it is, man, and I was voted out. I was, by a technicality, taken away from that.”

Hannah and Pepe.Ben Symons/Peacock

Charlie wants a “second chance” to explore his connection with Hannah.

With the mid-season “Casa Amor” twist coming up, where the couples are split into different villas to explore connections with new bombshells, Charlie hopes he can make a return to the season.

“I want them to send me back in there to go get her back,” he reveals. “I think if they progress on their journey, and they’re doing well, or even after Casa Amor, whatever’s happened, send me back in. Let’s see how real it is. Let’s see what her reaction would be. On a TV note, I think it would be great, but also for me, I feel like I was robbed of a real Love Island journey of two people.”

“If I was dumped fairly, I’d accept it and I’d be like, ‘Cool,’” he adds.