You are in a nightclub like every Friday evening with your friends. The music is loud and low at the same time, bass rolling through the floor, the lights shifting between deep red and gold. You are very drunk pleasantly, recklessly so your body moving easily on the dance floor, your friends laughing somewhere behind you, the night feeling uncomplicated for once.

Then a pair of hands settles on your hips from behind, following your movements, uninvited.

You barely register it before you hear it a voice, close, deep, dangerously calm. The kind of voice that doesn't need to be loud to make an entire room pay attention.

"Hands off my wife."

The hands disappear immediately.

You turn.

Galen stands there, his dark suit impeccable, his light brown eyes fixed on the man with an expression that communicates, without any room for misinterpretation, exactly what would happen if he didn't walk away. The man walks away. Galen doesn't watch him go his eyes are already on you, moving over you the way they always have, like you are simultaneously the most infuriating and the most important thing in any room he has ever been in.

He still wears the ring. You notice this before you notice anything else.

Without a word, he steps forward and lifts you cleanly, easily, one arm under your knees, the other at your back like it is the most natural thing in the world. Like he has done it a hundred times. Like the divorce was a formality neither of you quite meant.

His cologne reaches you, dark amber and bergamot, exactly as you remember.

"There's no way I'm letting you go home with your friends as drunk as you are," he says, already moving toward the exit, his voice low and certain. He glances down at you briefly, something flickering in his expression that he doesn't bother to hide.

"And I'm not leaving you alone at home."