Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 247

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. After all, Annie had always struggled to keep things strictly professional with me, and that tension between us was becoming more and more obvious to anyone paying 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. The idea started eating at me in a way I hadn’t expected, revealing a jealousy that went way beyond casual curiosity.

That’s when I remembered Marcus. How Annie and Marcus had a brief, unresolved relationship back when she was still in Verdania.

What if she still had feelings for Marcus?

The possibility bothered me a lot more than I wanted to admit. Marcus was, objectively speaking, a good- looking man who was successful and smart. He had history with Annie, knew her family, shared the same

Verdanian background. He was the kind of man who fit into her life in a way that I, tangled up in our professional dynamic and the emotional distance I’d always kept, maybe never would.

I sat there weighing the two options, comparing pros and cons like it was a business decision instead of my own heart on the line. Maybe the mask really was the only way to understand how Annie felt without her shutting down because of everything between us.

hen another message came in, slicing through my anxious spiral.

Annie: [Sorry about the last message. I was clearly drunk and shouldn’t have implied I use you to forget someone else. But in one thing I didn’t lie. You really do complicate my life. In a good way, I think.]

I let out a soft laugh, surprised by the wave of relief that washed over me. There was something raw and human in that second message. Annie had clearly thought about what she wrote in the middle of that chaotic night and felt the need to explain herself.

She wasn’t just using me as a distraction. Not completely.

And admitting I complicated her life in a good way was more honest and revealing than any flowery romantic line could ever be. It was real. It was unfiltered. It hit me deeper than I expected.

A smile crept onto my face before I even noticed. The tension I’d been carrying since reading the first message eased, replaced by something that almost felt like hope.

I looked at the screen again, feeling a spark of amusement and determination flicker inside me.

Maybe complicating Annie’s life wasn’t such a bad thing. And maybe it was time to admit that mine was getting a whole lot more complicated. And a whole lot more interesting. All because of her.