Guy's Behavior

Confused by work crush?

Hi everyone! I’ll try and cram everything into this small space, and opinions will be greatly received!
I’ve been working with this guy for close to a year. Im his trainer, so we spend significant amounts of time together. We be had a great relationship from day 1, lots of banter, flirting, teasing, joking, I’m sure you get the picture. He would often just buy me food, compliment me, touch me, I've often caught him staring at me regularly from across the room. Recently I had to take a month off work due to an injury, and another college of mine would regularly text me things like’hes talking about you again’, he keeps asking me when your coming back’ ‘ he’s obsessed with talking about you’ . He would message me a lot too, ‘when are you coming back’, ‘works not the same without you’. A week before I returned to work, my colleague texts me again, ‘ his face lit up when I said you were coming back, he’s like a lovesick puppy’. I would normally have brushed this off again, but I consider this woman to be a fantastic judge of people, she’s rarely wrong. So the crush intensifies.
When I return to work, everything’s as it was with him. So I decided to tell him that I was crushing a little. I told him face to face, texting wasn’t the way I wanted to deal with this. It was rushed, not the way I wanted to handle it, but we both had separate jobs that day, and needed to get back to them. We didn’t see eachother for the rest of the shift.
Next day he asks me a text saying that as far as he is concerned, friendship is as far as we go. Which is fine, I knew the risk in being open about how i was feeling.
My friend is beyond shocked by his response, tbh I’m a little shocked and now obviously regretting my decision to be so honest. Is the old saying actions speak louder than words here? Or did I get this whole scenario wrong?

Confused by work crush?
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