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practically hopping up and down. 
     
    Samuel didn’t waste a second. As soon as both his feet were on the ground after he’d swung off his bike he was running over to his family.  He gathered them all in his arms, dimly aware that the cheering had increased a few decibels.  He hid his sobs of happiness and regret in his wife’s thick, russet hair, knowing only she could hear them.  There was barely enough room in his embrace to encompass his wife and both children, but they squeezed in until they all fit.  It was something else to be able to hold them so freely after the rules and regulations of prison, and Samuel renewed his promise to himself that under no circumstances would he be spending time behind bars ever again.  The new deal with the Rojas family would incur heavy tariffs if any of them were caught.  Well, he’d just have to play it smart, and he knew he was plenty capable of that.
     
    He scrubbed his visible emotion away with his hands as he pulled back so that he could drop to one knee to better hold his children.  They were completely unreserved in the moment of expressing their joy at the return of their daddy, and Samuel felt doubly blessed for the remnants of the innocence of their youth.   For the first time he fully appreciated just how many years of their lives he had lost and the sensation that accompanied that realization just about stopped his heart from beating. It was Moira, showing her awareness that it was not just a homecoming to the three of them, who put her hand on the back of his neck to guide him to stand before gently pushing him into the throng of people behind her.  Samuel was immediately disoriented, dizzy to the point of drunkenness from the calls and shouts and slaps on his back.  After years of keeping as much distance as possible between himself and any other human, he almost vomited with the sensory overload of being surrounded and touched by so many people.
     
    Like the contraction of a muscle, the crowd propelled him through itself into the clubhouse.  After the bright sunshine Samuel was blinded by the darkness of the room, but his brothers, having also been squeezed through by the crowd and now at his back, kept his momentum going until he hit the bar.  Before he even knew what was happening, he was downing a shot of good whiskey, feeling the burn down his throat all the way into his stomach and out through his limbs.  His sense of smell belatedly caught up with happenings and informed his brain that a variety of food was awaiting his attention.  His stomach grumbled appreciatively, engendering guffaws from those nearest to him, seconds before a plate filled with a mouth-watering array was pressed into his hands.  Terry, whose beam was dimmed only slightly by the concern in his eyes, an expression mirrored exactly by Fletch, the club’s Sergeant at Arms, spread their arms to push back a cordon around Samuel so that he could draw a breath. 
     
    Someone, Samuel didn’t see who, lifted Dean and Ashleigh onto barstools on either side of him.  Moira stood behind Ashleigh, making sure the crowd didn’t knock the young girl from her perch.  Samuel had a flash of knowing that Dean was beyond allowing his mother to protect him in such a way, but he was holding his own space on his precarious seat which gave Samuel a small flash of fatherly pride.
     
    Having eaten and practically inhaled another shot and a bottle of beer, it took Samuel a few giddy minutes to remember that he didn’t have to wait for permission or a bell to do anything he wanted to do , anything at all, and that nothing was denied to him.  He caught Moira’s eye.  Terry and Fletch had obviously seen the glint of his intentions because their laughter caused several heads to turn their way.
     
    “Go on.  There’s a room cleared in back for you two.  Moira knows which one.”  Terry nodded at the doorway which led from the main room of the clubhouse to a corridor which ran almost the