*And it's been a while but I still feel the same/Maybe I should let you go*
"Call her and be done with this."
This from Ubbe who's grown frustrated with Ivar's increasingly mercurial moods, after what was supposed to be a simple discussion regarding a potential client dissolved into near violence.
*It's not so simple*, he wants to tell his brother, feeling the anger and longing twisting in his gut. *Not so simple at all.*
So he bites his tongue and stares daggers into his brother's retreating back.
He should never have said anything about it. About her.
He wants to say he doesn't call because he doesn't have her number, and the chances she's kept the same one after all this time are slim to none, but there's more than just that.
If he's honest with himself, which he is, even in his silence, there's fear in him - fear that all the past hurts and regrets will grow so bright and blinding that he won't be able to see or feel anything else beyond them.
And fear, as well, that they won't, that it might be exactly as it was before she'd run off and left him. They'll return to strawberry kisses and bourbon-laced sighs, and pretending that love hadn't found a home between them.