03 Long Night Moon - Seasons of the Moon by S.M. Reine Page A

Seth’s steadying hand on her arm—where had he come from?—kept her from doing something stupid.
    “Rylie?”
    Hearing her aunt’s weak voice made every violent thought vanish. Rylie pushed the doctor aside and went inside.
    Gwyn had a needle in her arm and a couple bags of fluid hanging over her head. Rylie’s heart fragmented into a hundred pieces to see it. She sank into the chair at her side.
    “Still not dead, babe,” Gwyn said. Her words croaked, so she cleared her voice before speaking again. “So stop looking like you’re mourning.”
    Rylie had promised herself she wouldn’t cry anymore, but seeing her aunt looking so small and helpless in a hospital bed was too much. Her dad’s death was frighteningly sudden—one day, he kissed her goodbye, and the next, a counselor was giving her the bad news—and she wasn’t sure if it was worse losing a family member quickly or not.
    Teardrops plopped on the backs of her hands. She sniffled hard and wiped them on her jeans. “You fell,” Rylie said. It was difficult to speak around the lump in her throat.
    “Everybody falls.”
    “Not everybody is sick, though. I knew you were getting worse!”
    “I’ve been feeling fine,” she insisted. “But… I haven’t watched my t-cell counts as closely as I should, and I didn’t like how my medication made me feel. So I didn’t take a lot of it.” Anger burst in Rylie’s chest, but Gwyn touched her hand before she could speak. The IV was taped to her wrist. “Everybody falls. Everybody makes mistakes.”
    “Mistakes like this could kill you,” Rylie said.
    “Sometimes the treatment feels worse than the disease. You’ll understand someday—hopefully not anytime soon.” She sighed. “But you’re right. Now we’re both paying the price.”
    Dread settled like a lead weight in Rylie’s stomach. “What’s happened?”
    “What I have is… well, it’s kind of like a cold. But it’s a terrible cold my body can’t fight. My immune system’s shot. When I rode Butch out to check on a heifer, it got hard to breathe, and I passed out. No big worry there. But it’s caused by a more serious problem.” Gwyn’s thumb rubbed across the back of Rylie’s hand. “I’m going to be in the hospital for a couple days.”
    “I’ll take care of the herd,” Rylie said. “I’ll move them to the barn myself. I can—”
    “You can make them run away, that’s what you can do. You’re terrible with the cattle. Call Abel. He’ll know what needs done.”
    “Is that why you’ve had him around so much? Have you been planning to get hospitalized?”
    “Nobody plans to be sick, babe."
    Gwyn sagged against the pillow, like all that talking had exhausted her. It probably had.
    Rylie glared at the toe of her boots, stung by the thought that her aunt’s preparations for a worst case scenario involved getting Abel to help—Abel, of all people—instead of her niece.
    “I’ll call him,” she said without looking up.
    “You’ll have to call your mom, too. Jessica needs to know.”
    Her gaze shot to Gwyn’s face. “What?”
    “Like it or not, she’s still your mother,” she said. She couldn’t seem to work up the strength to look stern, though she tried.
    “But—”
    “Seth can come in, you know. Don’t make the boy wait outside.”
    Rylie hadn’t realized he was still in the hall. The door was half-open, and she could see the corner of a leather jacket on the other side. He must have been listening to their conversation. He stepped in and grabbed Rylie’s hand.
    “Ms. Gresham,” he said, a little too formally. He cracked a smile. It wasn’t his usual bright grin. “You’ve looked better.”
    “There’s no point trying to impress me now. Make sure Rylie takes care of herself. You got me? And have fun at the Winter Ball. I’ll be disappointed if I spent all that money on a beautiful dress and find out you two moped around all night.”
    “I can’t go to the dance now,” Rylie said.
    Gwyn’s