Just found out "limerence" is a word and it's basically describing the last two years of my life

Hi everyone, first post here.
I'm 22M, and until like a week ago I genuinely didn't know this word existed. Finding this sub kind of hit me, because I always thought I was just bad at moving on or something was wrong with me.

Ok so here's the situation. Almost two years ago I met this girl at uni. Just a classmate at first, then we started talking more, and at some point she became one of my closest friends, honestly. The problem is that I fell really bad for her. She had a boyfriend so I never tried to actually do something about it. Now some months have passed since they broke up.
We text every single day, we see each other around campus obviously, but also outside of it pretty often.

She's never told me no, but she's also given me mixed signals but nothing I could point to and say "ok that's a CLEAR sign." So for almost two years now my brain has just been running on a loop, replaying texts, replaying moments together, trying to decode if there's something real there or if I'm just making it up in my head because I want it to be there.
I started to notice that I would plan my days and routines just to be able to see her, even deprioritizing things that I really should have focused on, and that everytime I had a moment alone I would start thinking of her and analysing our last interaction.

There's this one dinner we had, just the two of us, that I keep coming back to. I think that was the moment. I wanted to say something, or at least ask her out properly. I had planned everything because I was tired of this situation. But the vibe felt off that night, or at least I convinced myself it did, and I chickened out because I didn't want to risk the friendship over a rejection that I think was 99% coming.

I still don't know if that was the right call or if I just let fear pick for me.
Nothing's changed since. We're still close, still talk every day, which honestly makes it worse because there's no distance to actually get over her. Worst of all, she is basically my only real friend in university (I have other friends but not there), so losing her would mean returning to loneliness.

Reading about limerence kind of reframed everything for me. Like oh, this is a known thing, this is a pattern, not just me being pathetic about one girl.

Part of me wants to ask her out again, not really expecting a yes (even if I still hope to get one), but just to get a real answer and stop living in the "what if." Another part of me thinks that's exactly the kind of thing limerence makes you want to do, and I'd just be feeding it instead of ending it.

Anyone been through something like this? Did actually getting an answer, good or bad, help you move on? Or did it just make it worse?