Most people read those 4 words as the ending. Sometimes they are. Often they mean something serious that he does not want to type out: a hard week, a worry, a question about where you 2 are, a decision he wants to say out loud.
You already know what you would text back. That was never the hard part. The hard part is that you do not know what he meant, and the 4 words cannot tell you. The messages around them can.
Free to try. We never store your chats.
"What does we should talk mean from a guy." Search that and you get a list of every reason anyone has ever said it. Breakups, bad news, a job offer, a small thing that got big.
All of those are real. None of them is about him. A list can tell you what the words could mean. It cannot tell you what they mean coming from this person, on this day.
You read 1 line. Go back and read the whole thread from that day.
Then check 1 more thing: has he said "we should talk" to you before? What was it about last time? If it was a work thing or a family thing, that is how he flags anything heavy, not only the scary kind.
The wording. "Can we talk" and "we should talk" are softer. "We need to talk" sounds more urgent. But how he normally writes matters more than which verb he picked. Someone who is always blunt picks "need" for small things too.
A time, or no time. "We need to talk, tonight?" is a plan. "We need to talk." with nothing after it leaves you waiting, and the waiting is part of what feels bad.
What happened just before. The day after a fight, the 4 words are about the fight. On a normal day with nothing open between you, they are more likely about something in his life you do not know yet.
Do not send "about what", then "did i do something", then "just tell me now please". That is 3 messages asking him to do by text the thing he asked to do in person. It pushes the hardest talk into the worst place to have it.
Say yes to the way he asked for it instead. Something like: ok, tonight works. call me when you're off
That does 3 things. It agrees to the talk the way he wanted it, it fixes a time so you are not waiting all day, and it shows him you are steady enough to hear whatever it is. The real answer can wait until tonight, when it can be the whole one.
If you have already sent 2 or 3 messages asking what it is about, the best next message is none. Your questions are there. He has a time. Let tonight come.
Waiting a bit here is not you being cold. It is you not turning 1 serious message into 6 panicked ones. And if he has blocked you or asked you to stop contacting him, do not push for the talk. That answer stands on its own.
You paste the whole thread, not the 4 words. It reads "we need to talk" against him rather than against a list — what he sent before and after, where he is right now, and how to take it.
Then it writes the reply back in 4 tones, and tells you if the better move right now is to wait instead of answering.
Try it on your conversation