He called me love? Advice?

Ok so this'll be a little long, but be warned I'm in no way inclined to stop this relationship because rn I'm having a good time and I'm just a bit interested in what you guys think. Ok.

I started talking to a guy in February, I think it was, strickly to help get off. He'd tell me what to do physically and he got off on that. I knew it wasn't exclusive and that it could easily just end and I was fine with this. It evolved over time, from text to photos to calling to video calling. It's all good. Eventually I noticed we talk every single day. I could not tell you a day where we didn't talk -even through traveling to Costa Rica and Europe on two different occasions. I, of course, have caught feelings a few times then it kinda wandered off to wherever, which is fine. I did tell him once about my feelings and through my interpretation he was basically 'that's fine but I don't particularly return the feelings, can we keep the relationship', and I was like sure that's fine. Because honestly he lives too far away from me anyways.

So I'm in Europe at the moment so the time zone difference is a bit obnoxious. And I said gnight to him one night, couldn't sleep, talked to him briefly again, and then said I'd try again and he said "Okay love". He's never called me love before when talking, although he's said "my dear" but that's more of a thing he's done for all girls in the phase of 'telling women what to do' he had(I'm assuming had because last time I asked him he said he didn't really do that anymore, and plus the app he used and I used shut down recently, unconnected to anything we were doing). Of course that could totally be inaccurate.

But I asked him about it the next day which was this brief conversation "love?" "What about it?" "Idk it surprised me" ":3". We do talk with faces a lot too so that's not a weird thing for him to type.

I've read a bit about being called love on Google, oh how I love thee, but idk doesn't seem like the best option for my 'special' case.

So I'm just curious of your guy's thoughts of anything I've said, really.