They pulled away, went quiet, made it look easy to walk. Now you are wondering whether they ever look back. The answer is not the clean yes or no most articles give you.
Short answer: sometimes, and the feeling can arrive more strongly once the relationship is over than it ever seemed to while it was happening. For someone who copes by switching feeling off, the calm exit was managing the feeling rather than proving its absence.
You were right to notice the coldness at the end, and right to sense there was more underneath it; both can be true. Once distance has restored enough safety, what was switched off can come back on, which is why the reaching-back can seem to contradict everything you saw. A return tells you the bond registered.
What a return does not tell you, on its own, is what has changed. The pattern that made closeness feel like pressure is still there unless something has been done about it, and that is the distinction that protects you from waiting on the wrong thing.
If they come back, watch for the small things rather than the declaration: staying in a hard conversation, coming back after pulling away, consistency you can start to feel. Those are the signals that mean something.
Go deeper
The Dismissive Avoidant maps the whole pattern from both sides — how the fortress was built, what it protects, what it costs, and where the door is — with 179 real questions answered.