"I'm just... afraid that she'll show up," Peter said, more quietly. "And that... well, I don't really know what would be worse. If I move on and she shows up and likes me still, the way I've been here, but I've been assuming that we wouldn't work, and then-- or if she doesn't like me, but I haven't entirely moved on."
Both of those things would hurt. He would either feel like he'd betrayed her, or he would know with depressing finality that she'd never really loved him for the person he had the potential to be. "I'm just trying to do what's best for me, since she's not here for me to know what's best for her. That's not stupid, right?"
Hestia had told him that it wasn't, and so had Juni, but some part of Peter felt that they both might be biased. That Hestia was biased because she wanted to believe that for herself, and that Juni was biased because she just wanted to trust her dad's judgment. A part of him was afraid that his daughter was just doing what Peter himself did a lot of the time, and going along with it because she didn't know what else to do. And he wanted nothing more than to help his daughter figure out how to stand on her own two feet-- but he had to do that himself before he could help her with it, didn't he?