Budding Relationship or Situationship?

I (24F) have been seeing this guy (25M) for around 2 months. We grew up together and were pretty close friends in high school until I moved schools. We’d bump into or messaged each other randomly but drifted apart slowly. I had always had feelings for him but the timing was always off.

Anyways I came back to our hometown to start working at a fairly popular store here as my friend needed someone to fill in a vacancy and I decided to stay after a month of working here. He came into the store 3-4 months ago and I didn’t recognize him at first (he had deleted his social media) but as soon as he saw me he knew who I was. It luckily was pretty slow so we stood there and talked for 10 minutes catching each other up to speed on our lives now. He has a young child now but is no longer with their mom. It was a pretty nasty break up that occurred a year ago but they’re still civil for their child. He gave me his number and I called him so he would have mine saved as well. After I had gotten off of work I texted him and we hung out the next night after I got off work. We went to go get dinner together and ended up going back to his place after to watch a movie. He ended up kissing me after telling me he had feelings for me and I went to bed with the biggest smile.

After that night we hung out every other day for around 2-3 weeks and ended up sleeping together. He introduced me to his mom and dad then would bring me over whenever he would hang out with his friends. I brought him to one of my friend’s house for our weekly group movie/dinner night. About a week after I introduced him to my friends, he started to grow distant and kept saying it was because his personal/professional life had gotten hectic or difficult. He then texted me to say that we should slow down because “we are acting like we’re already in a relationship”. He said he wants to get to know who I am now because he wants to make sure we’ll stay together before he introduces me to his child. I’ll admit that I was already invested in him so it stung but I agreed because he had a fairly valid point and he was being a great dad by waiting to introduce me. We met up once week and it slowly stretched into every 2 weeks. I told him that if he actually wanted to have any sort of relationship with me or “get to know” me, he would have to put in more effort and time into actually seeing me. He apologized and said he’d do better because he didn’t want to “self-sabotage a good thing”. Now I am waiting on a single text for 6-8 hours sometimes 12 and he rarely answers my phone calls even though his work depends on his phone always being on. He blames it on work or drama happening with his family or friend group.

Sometimes it’s having a bunch of extra jobs dropped on him, he’s helping people out with their living situations or meditating fights within relationships in his friend group. It seems like he’s making time for everyone else but me. When we do get to see each other he explains everything and I get to tell him how I’ve been feeling without waiting hours for a response. Afterwards we end up having a nice time together just watching movies, getting dinner/lunch or going for late night drives to look at the stars. He tells me whenever he can how amazing I am and he says he is lucky to have me but the communication issues haven’t gotten any better. In fact they have gotten worse, I am now starting to think that he doesn’t want a relationship anymore and we’re in a situationship. I feel like I’m just here to be emotional support or a warm body to keep in bed and he’s just stringing me along. I would appreciate some input and honesty from people who aren’t my friends (they have very differing opinions so they aren’t helping).

TL;DR: Reconnected with a guy, got close, but now he’s pulling away and I don’t know how to proceed.