You already know the pull. The silence, then the message. The distance, then the reaching back. If you are waiting to find out whether they will return, this is for you.
Short answer: often, yes. Distance can quiet the threat that closeness raised, and once it is quiet the longing has room to return. A return tells you the bond was real. What it cannot tell you, on its own, is whether the pattern that ended things has changed.
If you have lived the hot-and-cold of it, the reaching-back will make sense: the same person who needed space can, weeks later, be the one who cannot let go. The warmth of the coming-back can feel like proof that this time is different. Often it is simply the pattern running its other half, and the book maps that loop, from rupture to return, as the Post-Rupture Cycle.
Whether to open the door is a decision about what happens after the reunion, and that is exactly where hope and history blur. Real change shows in behaviour over time: responsibility taken, repair made, consistency you can feel. A return is compatible with all of that, and also with none of it.
Before answering the message, decide what you would need to see over the next month, in behaviour rather than words, for this to be different. Write it down. Then let the month answer, rather than the first warm evening.
Go deeper
The Fearful Avoidant maps the whole pattern from both sides — the Two-Alarm System, the Post-Rupture Cycle, a Decoder at the end of every chapter and 122 real questions answered.