Read Online Posey (Low #1.5) by Mary Elizabeth - Free Book Online

“I miss you, Low.”
    He presses his hand over mine, and I swear I feel warmth through the glass. “This isn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
    “You knew you could have come to me.” My eyes brim with tears, and the tips of my ears burn with pent-up frustration. I’m not the one with chains on my wrists, but I won’t cry in a place like this for everyone to see. “I could have fed you, Low. It’s been six lonely months with you in here.”
    “Tell me something,” unruliness says to change the subject, looking back at me with glossy blues.
    I sigh, outlining my hand through the glass with the tip of my pointer finger. “My mom hired a new gardener. He totally fucked up her begonias and blamed it on the rabbits. Like we have so many rabbits running around Culver City.”
    “More than you think,” he says.
    “Anyway, he’s gross and not you, but I give him water.” I shrug. “He’s old, so I take pity on his soul.”
    “How’s school, Poe? Are you still going?” Lowen asks. 
    “Yep, I worked on my psychology paper on the bus ride over here.” I drop my hand from the glass and stick my thumbnail back between my teeth before saying, “But I had to drop half of my classes.”
    “Why?” He sits up, and his mouth falls in a straight line.
    “College is expensive, Lowen. My parents try to help out, but they have their own shit going on.”
    Nothing has changed with them. If anything, their nonchalance about their only daughter has worsened. The grass isn’t so green on the other side because the grass is in fucking prison, and they know it. I only take the trip to Inglewood every couple of weeks now that Lowen is gone, to check in and help out where I can, so it’s just my mom, my dad, and I … awkward and silent.
    “What’s more important than getting you through school?” he asks, practically spitting the words.
    “I’m working,” I say. “I got a job at that trendy coffee shop down the street from school.”
    “Two minutes,” the guard warns. 
    “There’s not much money in serving java to college kids, but I’m saving, Low. In four years, I should have enough for us to get our own place,” I say in a rush to get everything said before our visit ends. “Maybe I can finish school by then, but you can mow lawns … And we can get a dog, you know. Things can be normal for you if I save enough. You won’t be hungry.”
    Disappointment drops the phone and rests his head against the glass so that I can’t see his face.
    “One more minute!” the guard yells. “Wrap it up.”
    I beat the palm of my hand onto the glass as my heart bursts, refusing to let him waste precious seconds together feeling sorry for himself when it’s he who did this to us. One hour every other week is all we get. Each tick and tock needs to count for something. It needs to matter.
    “Lowen!” My voice ricochets off our glass barrier. Tears fall freely from my hazel eyes, and soon I’m drawing the attention of other prisoners and their company.
    “Thirty seconds.” 
    “I’m not leaving you. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?” I cry loudly as heartbreak falls from my eyes, banging the phone against the divider. “I’m here. I’m here with you.”
    It takes every scrap of self-control I have not to claw through the glass with my too-short fingernails. Oily panic sludges though my veins, not mixing with blood, coating my heart in thick slop. Every beat aches. Living is agonizing. Fuck peanut butter.
    Clenching his jaw, Low picks up the phone and blinks the tears away. “I know, babe.”
    “Time’s up!” the guard yells. “Hang up the phones and stand to your feet.”
    “I love you,” I whisper through the thickest sadness.
    “Visiting time is over, Seely,” a CO says, hovering behind the prisoner. “Hang up.”
    “Give me a second,” Low replies, tightening his grip around the receiver.
    “I’ll come back,” I say in a hurry. Sweat pools between my palm and the black