Claire nodded. "Please. I love an ambush-free Sunday."
"If we do this—dating, trying, whatever word doesn't scare the table—I still can't be Nash's ER doc. Even with the chart closed, if you walk into Harbor Night and I'm the only DVM on, I'll transfer when I can and disclose when I can't. Transparency over vibes."
"Agreed." Claire stirred her coffee though it didn't need stirring. "And I need you to know my life is currently puppy adolescence, a feature deadline, and a roommate who will interview you with her eyes. I'm interested. I'm also not graceful every day."
"I'm interested," Isaiah said, plain. "I'm also sometimes a bat with blood sugar issues and a mother who will invite you to dinner before you've decided my middle name matters. We can go slow enough that nobody's performing a future."
Claire felt her shoulders drop a centimeter. "Slow sounds like a language I can learn."
They talked until the oat milk cooled. Isaiah told her about the GDV dog's owners sending a card that just said thank you for the soft voice, and how praise like that healed and hollowed him at once. Claire told him about the humble donor and about deleting the animal-hospital metaphor from her night-shift draft. He looked pleased in a quiet way.
"What would you have written?" he asked.
"That night clinics are where people bring the scream before they know if it's cereal or catastrophe," Claire said. "And that the kindness isn't in guessing right. It's in examining either way."
Isaiah turned his cup. "You can write that. Just don't write me into it as a character yet."
"Deal."
Outside, they walked half a block with no dogs, just the two of them testing the air. At the corner, Isaiah stopped.
"I have overnight tomorrow," he said. "If I go quiet, it's sleep and shift, not disappearance."
"If I send you a video of Nash losing a fight to a sock, it's not a medical question."
"Appreciated." His eyes softened into that familiar intensity, daylight version. "Claire. For the record—excellent judgment isn't free. It costs waiting. It costs saying no when yes would be sweeter. I'm glad we paid some of that up front."
Claire's throat tightened, happy and scared together. "I'm glad too. I'm also... not ready to call this a relationship like we've survived a winter. Can we be the thing that had coffee and scheduled another walk and didn't lie?"
"We can be that," Isaiah said.
He didn't kiss her. He asked, first. "Would it be all right if I hugged you?"
"Yes," Claire said, and the hug was brief, warm, rain-jacket cool on her cheek, human. When they stepped back, the held-open space between them felt honest rather than empty.
"Tuesday evening?" Isaiah asked. "River path. Dogs allowed. No charts."