Tracking Logan Foster

{11} How to Save a Life

For the second time in a matter of a two week span, I found myself sprinting after the boy with the dirty blonde hair and emotionless brown eyes.

I raced through the woods, branches smacking into my face to leave scrapes across my cheeks as the frigid air burned my lungs, but I never once stopped running until I had made it to the railroad tracks.

Immediately assuming the worst, my mind jumped to conclusions once the toes of my boots scraped along the tracks in my desperate search for Logan Foster.

If the discarded gun in the middle of the tracks was any indication as to what had happened, then I knew that my initial guess wasn't far off from what had actually happened to Logan.

Tears freely flowed down my face, flooding my mouth as I gasped for breath. My hands found the gun on the ground where I kneeled in the middle of the train tracks, and my finger shook along the trigger.

The safety was off and I shakily raised it to my own head, replaying the scene all those nights ago of when I had found the barrel of the gun in Logan's mouth.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to imagine what he had felt just seconds away from ending his life; if he had been scared, angry, sad, or relieved.

"What the fuck are you doing?" An enraged voice bellowed, startling the gun out of my hand to clatter against the tracks.

My head whipped around, and my eyes roamed the surrounding area to clash with intense brown ones just a foot away.

Dirty blonde hair swept in the newcomer's eyes as he scooped the gun off the ground before tucking it in the waistband of his jeans.

"I-I thought that y-you..." I trailed off, unable to finish my sentence.

Logan's eyes narrowed as he kneeled beside my quivering frame. Laying a gentle hand on my shoulder, he used the other to delicately place his fingers under my chin to tilt my head up.

Searching my eyes, he whispered, "Thought that I had what? Killed myself?"

The slight nod of my head was enough of an answer for him.

He shook his head as his lips halfheartedly turned up at the corner. "Not yet."

I kept my lips sealed shut as we just stared at each other, the background fading out until the two of us were seemingly the only ones in the entire world.

My heart drummed in my chest, and before I knew what was happening, Logan's lips descended on mine, and he pressed a warm kiss on my lips.

My cheeks undoubtedly turned a deep crimson color, and a faint blush stained Logan's as he looked everywhere but at me once he pulled away.

"Thank you, Iris. You've truly shown me how wonderful life can be. My cold heart has been warmed again by your loving spirits," he said with full and open honestly.

"Then what about the note?" I blurted.

Logan visibly flinched, and darted his eyes away from mine for a fraction of a second before focusing intently back on me.

"I visited my brother again. He told me that my biological father had jumped off the side of a bridge and my mother had died of cancer not long after."

I was utterly speechless. I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I could finally find the words to speak.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized lamely, expecting him to scold me for doing so when it wasn't my fault, but he continued on as if I hadn't said a word.

"Justin says my father committed suicide because of the divorce that I caused. He accuses that everything was my fault and I should be the one laying six feet under the ground instead of my parents. And you know what?" He asked, rhetorically.

"What?" I breathed, anxiously awaiting his response.

"I don't blame him."

Logan stood up, pulled the gun free from its temporary holster, and positioned it right against his temple.

"No!" I screamed, launching myself at him.

Neither of us had seen the bright light of the oncoming train barreling right for us. We had been so engrossed with each other that we hadn't even heard it.

However, the deafening sound of a gun firing off at such a close range was as unmistakable as the sound of a train barreling way too close to move out of the way from.

Logan crumpled to the ground seconds before the train hit and everything faded to black, commencing the beginning to our journey of endless dreams.

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