Hired a Gigolo, Got a Billionaire

Chapter 626 Gwen's POV | stood up so fast my chair nearly tipped over. "Nick!" | called again, louder this time. He didn't stop or look back. He just kept walking through the restaurant with long, determined strides. | grabbed my purse, muttered a rushed apology to a completely confused Paul, and hurried after him. By the time | reached the street, Nick was almost halfway down the block, walking fast, shoulders rigid, hands shoved into his pockets. "Nick!" | shouted, running toward him. "Wait!" He slowed. Stopped. But didn't turn around.

| reached him, slightly out of breath, my heart racing. Not from the run. From the panic clawing up my chest. "Nick, please," | said, touching his arm. ---- He turned then. And the look on his face cut straight through me. It wasn't anger. Or not just anger. It was humiliation. Shame. A deep, aching hurt. "Why did you leave like that?" | asked, my voice shaking. He stared at me like I'd asked the most absurd question in the world. "Do you really know me so little that you have to ask?" he shot back, disbelief laced with pain. 1..." | started, but the words wouldn't come.

"You invited me to see your life in Florentia," he said, gesturing vaguely around us. "And | agreed. | came. But | never imagined... you never told me... that you were this kind of person." "What kind of person?" | asked, feeling tears burn behind my eyes. His green eyes, the ones | loved, were now filled with something raw and wounded. ---- "The kind who spends in one night at dinner what | have in debt," he said, each word forced out like it hurt. "The kind who lives in a world so far from mine that... | don't even know how we got here. "That's not fair," | said, shaking my head.

money." "Because it is about money!" he snapped, his voice echoing down the street. "It's about the fact that you clearly have a lot of it and | clearly don't. And you hid that from me, Gwen. You deliberately hid it." "| didn't hide it," | said weakly, knowing it wasn't true even as the words left my mouth. "No?" He raised an eyebrow. "Then tell me, at what point in the last few months did you mention you live in a penthouse

prices?" | opened my mouth then closed it. There was no good answer. Because he was right. | had hidden it. ---- "just..." | tried again, desperate. "I just wanted you to know me first. Me. Not... not all of that." "But all of that is part of you!" he

heavy and suffocating. Then Nick slowly shook his head. That devastated look still there. "This isn't going to work," he said quietly, but firmly. "No. No, no,"| said immediately, panic flooding

work, Gwen?" he asked, and the pain in his voice physically hurt. "I can barely pay my own bills. | have a debt hanging over my head that could cost me everything. And you... you live in a world where forty-two thousand dollars is probably what you spend on... | don't even know. Clothes? Dinners? Cars?" "Youre being too proud," | shot

the way they actually are instead of the way we wish they were." "But | don't want them to be different," | insisted, my voice breaking. "I want you. Exactly as you are. The money doesn't matter to me." "But it matters to me," he said, and his voice cracked too. "It matters when | can't give you even a fraction of what you already have. When I can't take you to a place like that without