We went back inside eventually, both of us quiet, the kind of quiet that wasn't uncomfortable so much as worn out.
"You want to finish listening to it?" Rhys asked, nodding at the laptop still open on my desk. "We don't have to tonight if you're not up for it."
"No, let's finish. I want to get it done."
I didn't play the rest of it out loud with him sitting there. I told him I'd already listened to the full thing once before he showed up, just to check the audio quality, and that I could type up the remaining transcript myself since I already had the recording memorized. It wasn't even really a lie, I did have it memorized. Every word of it lived in my chest already, had lived there for three years.
He didn't question it. By then he was exhausted too, emotionally wrung out from a conve
