Her green eyes widen. “So we were babies.”
“Something like that,” he murmurs.
“How did we meet?”
Luke smiles. It was on a hot Nashville street corner on Broadway, where he and the boys were a scrappy street corner string band busking for a dollar. Luke was in the middle of a song when he keeled over from the heat. Seth and Jace still give him shit about it until this day. But it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Because he met Sal.
He still remembers waking up to see Sal in her paramedic uniform, cool and confident, hovering over him, checking him for vitals. Her eyes were so big and green he could have drowned in them. “Welcome back, country boy,” she said with a wry smile. Her graceful fingers brushed hair from his brow. Then she barked orders for him to drink fluids, packed up her med kit, and was gone.
“The least she coulda done was give you mouth-to-mouth,” Seth joked later as they packed up their instruments.
His brother had expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. Luke was too busy thinking up ways to see Sal again. Two weeks later, he tracked her down at some dive bar, where they shared a drink and then took a drive out on some dusty country back road.
Looking back on it, he fell in love with her right there on that Broadway street corner.
“You sure you want to hear it?” Luke eyes Sal with concern. She’s tired. Dark purple bruises thumbprinted beneath her eyes. “I should let you rest.”
She smiles a sleepy smile. “You could talk while I rest. Unless you need to go?”
“Darlin’,” he says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ears, “you’re back. I ain’t leavin’ your side until you kick my ass out.”
That earns Luke half a laugh. And what a beautiful laugh it is.
So Luke talks. Sal listens, trying hard to stay awake, but he can see his drawl soothing her to sleep. Soon, Sal’s eyes are closed, her long lashes dark against her pale cheek.
Luke’s eyes stay steady on the jumping blue lines of the heart monitor. Sal’s heartbeat is a soundtrack he can’t get enough of.
The door swings open.
Luke glances up with a scowl. The first person to come through that door and wake Sal is getting one hell of an ass beating.
It’s Seth. His eyes take in the scene, Luke watching Sal sleep, her small hand in his. “Luke,” he says, his face grim. “The cops are here.”