The Problem With Crazy (26 page)

“Fine.” I sighed. Lachlan gave a tiny fist pump, then jumped out of the seat, slid over the bonnet of the car and snatched the keys from my hand, indicating I should take the passenger seat.

“I’m not going to make you drive to your own bridge-jumping party,” he said with a wink, as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him.

“Can’t you take anything seriously?” I grumbled as I hopped in the car. But I was smiling when I said it. A smirk that I was fighting too hard to keep inside me, but that I knew was playing on my face—and I knew he saw it, too.

We took off out of the parking lot at speeds I never would have driven, and I found myself sucking in my breath when we rounded corners too fast, went that extra mile to speed through a red light.

“Do you drive like this on your bike?” I gasped after we flashed through an orange-nearly-red light at the same time as a truck turned across the intersection from the opposite direction. We beat it by a fraction of a second, but knowing it happened because Lachlan was obviously speeding was of little comfort.

“You ride a bike, Kate.” Lachlan flashed those eyes of his over at me and I shivered, my mind temporarily off the road as I felt his gaze on my body. “You don’t
drive
it.”

I bit my tongue and didn’t say a word.
Don’t give in, Kate. Don’t cave.

We drove in silence as the sky turned darker, the first stars shining bright in the darkened sky. After a while I propped my knees up, pressing them against the dashboard so my body was moulded into the seat behind me.

Minutes ticked by, and I ran over my list of problems in my head.

Dad.

Self.

Lachlan.

It was like a broken record, cataloguing all the individual details of each one over and over till it was almost a script of made-up scenarios and emotions filing through my mind.

We kept going, speeding through the city until we reached the empty, long lines of the freeway that took us to Lakes. Almost no cars appeared in the lane going the opposite direction, a testament to the Sunday night traffic typical of the area. It was all dark, straight-line driving there and sparse, bushy countryside here, a monotonous journey I normally hated.

Despite our breakneck speed, I was intent on looking at every single thing: each bush, each slight variation in horizon height, and each tiny rock that grazed the skyline. Focussing on anything but the boy driving my car.

When we were twenty kilometres from the exit, I felt the speed drop slightly as Lachlan moved over to the far right lane. My mind ticked, calculating. Was he going to take us farther north? Were we going to skip the Lakes exit and continue on to some weird location where Lachlan would kiss me again? Give me some of his hippy counselling bullshit?

Chop me up into little pieces and hide my body?

The car moved toward a turning lane marked for police and emergency vehicles only, and Lachlan slowed the car right down. My eyes widened and I instinctively glanced in the rear-view mirror to make sure no cars were behind us.

“What are you
doing
?” I asked as he turned the wheel hard, sending us spinning into the turning bay. Thank God there was no one else on the road. We careened across the asphalt, and I heard my tyres give a slight scream of protest.

“This is crazy!”

“So is driving off a bridge.” Lachlan nudged the car forward so we were officially parked on the wrong side of the highway, facing south.

“Stop!” I screamed and clutched the seat. I dug my nails in so hard I could feel the metal spine of the seat underneath me.

“I have.” Lachlan was irritatingly calm.

“I mean reverse, you idiot!” A bright set of headlights bobbed in the distance, moving slowly toward us. Of course, it looked slow from here, but I knew they’d have to be going the speed limit, and that was fast—too fast to live through.

My pulse throbbed at my wrist. My eyes widened. Maybe this was it. I was going to die. Here on the highway, not of some disease like I’d been worried about, but with some crazy guy who, up until a few days ago, I’d been worried didn’t like me.

“Lachlan.” The lights were closer. They picked up speed with menacing intent. It was a three-lane road and we were only in one, but, oh, God, they were going so fast, and what if they didn’t see us and—

“Shit!” I bit my lip hard and screwed my eyes up. It was hard to breathe. My chest was in staccato mode, blunt tiny gasps. I tried to think all the thoughts I should think about before dying.

Dad before Huntington’s. Mum. Stacey.

Instead, all I saw was the crazy guy next to me who was about to take our lives in some crazy suicide pact and—

“I don’t want to die,” I yelled. My chest heaved in an almighty sob, a desperate gasp for air. Bile jumped in my throat. I felt the car jerk and move and I screamed, my chest still shuddering, my heart racing as my neck snapped back and then my chin slammed forward, crashing against my chest with such force my teeth grated together.

I felt removed from the situation, like I wasn’t really there. Pain shot through my neck, severe pain, not the slow, escaping kind I’d caused before with the stick.

This pain was hard and fast and different.

Why, though?

Why aren’t I dead?

I pried one eye open, then the other, and saw we were back in the turning bay. The gearbox said we were in reverse.

He’d reversed. When the car had gotten close, Lachlan had reversed us back into the safety of the turning bay. The jerk of motion wasn’t the other car hitting us. It was his abrupt driving.

I wasn’t dead. I was alive!

And I was furious.

“You idiot.” I slapped him across the face. His tanned cheek was now marred with my big, red handprint.

I jumped out of the car and ran to his side, yanked open the door and grabbed onto the lapels of his shirt. I pulled him out of the vehicle, so he was standing there next to me where I could see his body was giving off tiny trembles, like he was freaking out too.

“You crazy, stupid, insane, dickhead!” Each word was accentuated with a punch to his arm, his chest, his stomach. I was still kind of crying, weird gulps and shudders, but I couldn’t stop. He just took it, accepted the pummelling, while I yelled and screamed and ranted.

“We could have died.”

A very small voice came from his lips. “I wanted to make you realise you didn’t want to.” My eyes widened further and I gave him a sharp kick to the shins. This he couldn’t just take; he stumbled back and gave a sharp intake of breath.

“You could have killed us, you idiot.” I clapped my hands to my face. “I wasn’t serious. I would never do something like that.”

As the words came out of my mouth, I realised they were true. I couldn’t kill myself. Huntington’s or no.

“I saw you under the tree.” Lachlan’s voice was wavering. He sounded upset, and I wondered if he’d been just as shit-scared as I had. “You were hurting yourself.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Your arm.” He grabbed my elbow before I could protest and held it out under the streetlight in front of us. Dried blood ran in lines from several spots, scratches that raked from my shoulder to my wrist.

I blinked, surprised. I’d known I was after the release, but I hadn’t catalogued the damage I was doing. I thought back to the other times: kicking the fence, punching the wall. Was I capable of a lot more than I’d realised?

The pain hadn’t felt enough.

“You hurt yourself.” Lachlan’s voice was definitely trembling now. “That’s a sign of someone who is seriously crying out for help. I wanted you to realise how important it is to live.” He didn’t let go of my arm, still holding it delicately in his grasp. “But this was not the way to go about it and—Kate, I’m so sorry.”

I looked up at him and saw nothing but misery in his eyes. The streetlight highlighted the line of his jaw, and the tiny stubble glistening there. What he had done was so far from okay.

But was it so different from what I’d been doing to myself?

If you were numb to the pain of the blood you were drawing, would you have been numb to the reality of death?

Lachlan took his other hand and raised it to my face, gently tracing along my cheek. He stepped in closer to me, still holding my arm, running his hand up it so lightly it gave me goosebumps.

What was I doing? This guy was crazy. In the past four days he’d kissed me, run away, and nearly drove me into a head-on collision.

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. My chest was rising and falling, still at the speed of a freight train, and I couldn’t take my eyes from his lips.

“I can’t stay away,” Lachlan whispered. “You’re just—you’re everything.”

I was acutely aware of the lack of space between us as he cupped my head in his hand again. I melted into it, welcoming his touch. This time, I closed the gap to him and pressed my lips against his. At first he just stood there, a little taken aback, then he welcomed me, parting his lips and dampening them with mine.

He moved his hand from my face to the back of my head, the grip on my arm roaming to my back. He pulled me against him so our bodies were melded together, the impact of his chest against mine giving me chills.

He sucked on my bottom lip and I moaned, feeling the ache all over my body. I ran my hand up his arms, over his broad shoulders to the nape of his neck.

My heart was pounding as adrenaline coursed through my veins from the passion of the moment, a heated contrast against the stark fear of the moment before.

He took a step forward and pushed me up against the cool car door, pressing his hot body against mine until there was no space between us. I found myself writhing beneath him, thrusting my hips forward. I could feel him hard through his thin denim. I wanted him, so badly.

“Kate …” He groaned, and I felt his hot breath on my cheek, his hands gripping my hair.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“Don’t?” He pulled back. I saw the confusion in his eyes.

“Please don’t stop,” I said in my smallest voice. He answered my question with a fierce kiss, his hands running up my sides and lingering on the spot where my bra ran under my arm. I grabbed one of his hands and pressed it closer to my chest, desperate to feel his touch.

I was lost in the moment, in him, and in me, so much so that I’d stopped paying attention to the occasional car flying past. It was just Lachlan and I, and life, glorious, addictive life.

Or, it was.

Until the siren. Then it was us, life and an unimpressed policeman.

“Step away from the car.”

I jumped and ducked to the side, the crackling static of the megaphone making me jump. Blue-and-red lights flashed from a car that had pulled over into the turning bay.

Lachlan moved away from me and stood up straight. He didn’t let go of my hand, though, not for a second.

“Well, this is a little embarrassing,” he muttered, and I suppressed a giggle.

“What are you doing?” A middle-aged, round policeman with a very red face stepped out of the car and walked toward us, arms folded across his chest.

“We’re sorry, sir.” Lachlan ducked his head like he was bowing. It only made me want to laugh more.

“This is not an appropriate place to be n-necking.” The officer spat the word out, as if it offended him. His face was fifty shades of red. “You could have been killed.”

“We’re sorry,” I repeated. A tiny waver shook my voice. I couldn’t do it. How could I keep a straight face?

“It won’t happen again,” Lachlan chimed in.

“Well, move along now, or I’ll fine you for obstructing a safety lane.” He nodded toward the car, and I scrambled around to the passenger side as quick as I could.

“Thanks, Officer,” Lachlan said as he hopped in the car next to me, the picture of contrition.

“Just move it.” The man shook his head and walked back to his car. He placed one hand on the door handle, and then turned back to us, like he’d just remembered something of great import. “And remember,” his voice blared over the megaphone. Lachlan and I froze. “If it’s not on, it’s not on.”

I widened my eyes across the vehicle at Lachlan. He slammed his door shut.

Laughter erupted from deep within me. We completely lost it. “Did he … did he just say that?” I wheezed.

“He … he did.” Lachlan grinned. We laughed and laughed and laughed, till tears were coming out of our eyes and our sides were hurting. At one point, I was doubled over, hugging my knees and slapping my thighs in hilarity. Everything about the day was so very obscure. We laughed all the way home.

I felt different, somehow—like maybe I could handle this thing after all. And Lachlan never let go of my hand.

Not even once.