Hired a Gigolo, Got a Billionaire

Chapter 247 Nathaniel's POV I stared at my phone screen for the tenth time in the last five minutes, rereading Annie's message. Sunday morning light drifted through my apartment window, but I could barely focus on anything except the words glowing back at me. I'd reinstalled the app after accidentally overhearing Annie confess to Zoey that she'd started using it again to talk to me. Or... the other me. The conversation had happened in the corner of the apartment, but I was close enough to catch a few key words.

Once I realized she'd re-downloaded the app specifically to find me, I couldn't help it. I downloaded it again and found the message waiting. Annie: [Probably someone who challenges me. Or maybe I just like messing up my own life, because that's what you do. You show up and my mind turns into complete chaos, and I don't know why. For a few minutes, I can even forget about him... and that should be good, but it also scares me. I should delete this app again, but instead I'm here, drunk, telling you all this.] The time stamp said 3:17 a.m.

Annie had sent it a few hours after the party, clearly under the influence of alcohol and the emotional mess we'd all been swimming in that intense night. But two specific words kept pounding in my head. 'Forget him.' I stayed frozen on the couch, trying to process what I'd just read. On one hand, there was something almost freeing in the raw honesty of the message. She admitted I got to her, that our connection meant something, that I had the power to make her forget about other things weighing on her.

On the other hand, the reality behind those two words felt like a cold knife to the conscience. Him. There was another man in Annie's life. Someone important enough that she had to work at forgetting him. For one brief, hopeful moment, I considered that the "him" might actually be me. Nathaniel, her boss, the man she'd had that complicated moment with on the plane, the one who created thick, almost tangible tension every time we were in the same room.

attention. Maybe she was using Wanderer to escape the confused feelings she had for me. But doubt settled in fast, sharp and corrosive. What if it wasn't me? It could be someone else entirely. Someone from her past, or worse, someone in her present I didn't even know about.

who was successful and smart. He had history with Annie, knew her family, shared the same 1/3 Verdanian background. He was the kind of man who fit into her

it Marcus she was trying to forget when she talked to me as Wanderer? I ran a hand through my hair, frustration rising inside me. I'd trapped myself in a ridiculously complicated situation of my own making. As Nathaniel, I couldn't just ask her about her feelings for Marcus without coming off as invasive or inappropriate. As Wanderer, I was just

genuinely invested in whatever existed between us. Ask her out like a normal person, no masks, no games. See if we could handle all these tangled feelings face to face. The upside was obvious. Full honesty. No more secrets. No more pretending

hiding behind the Wanderer profile. Use that anonymous connection to understand what she really felt. Figure out if I had any real chance with her before revealing who I was. The advantage was that she would keep opening up to me in a way she might never manage in person. As Wanderer, I didn't carry