CHAPTER FIVE

EPISTEMOLOGY

( — the philosophical theory of knowledge. )

— ♡ —

          CONNOR DUNCAN WAS EVERYTHING RHIANNON WASN'T. Charismatic, cunning, powered by the constant desire of outsmarting and overpowering everyone who stood in his way, Connor told her she had to find a way of becoming in charge of her own ambition and do something about it—if she wanted to succeed, sacrifices had to be made and he wasn't shy about reminding her of everything that was supposedly holding her back.

          Her parents. Stephanie. Jude.

         He called them liabilities. They'd, eventually, be her downfall and, if she wanted to make it big, she had to dispose of them at some point, and, though there was a tiny bit of truth behind his words, it still left her feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Rhiannon had never thought of her family and Jude as hindrances; if anything, they were the exact opposite, pushing her to do better every time.

          He thought she could use better hobbies. Even though she modeled—and had done so for a few years at that point—he said no one would take her seriously as a scientist, yet she didn't drop it because of him. She volunteered at dog shelters. She swam. She knitted.

          Nothing was ever good enough for him.

          "Anchors can be bad for a reason," he said, spinning a cigarette between his bronze fingers. His movements were hypnotic and Rhiannon felt strangely drawn to him, even though he was two years her senior and hanging out with him meant wandering into dangerous territory. "They hold you down. They don't let you move on."

         "But they also keep you grounded," Rhiannon argued, arms wrapped around her knees as she forced herself to drink every word that came out of his mouth. Connor was different from everyone she had ever encountered and, while it terrified her a little bit, with the whole pulling her out of her meticulously designed routines business, her curiosity got the best of her. "They're not necessarily bad. They ensure you don't go over your head."

          "Then what's the point of ever doing anything if you're not constantly trying to outdo yourself? What's the point of staying grounded by people who don't let you spread your wings?"

          Rhiannon laughed, standing up from the gravel pathway and brushing off the bits of dust from her jeans. "I'm not a bird."

         "But you could be." He jumped off the concrete bench he had been standing on, arms outstretched on his sides like a plane, and Rhiannon briefly glanced at a security camera. Constant vigilance has always been one of the Ford family's various mottos, and it was only natural for their front garden to be full of surveillance methods. "You can be anything you want to be if you put enough effort into it."

          "You really think so?"

          Connor's lips twisted into a small smile as he raised his hands to tuck strands of her hair behind her ears, his touch leaving behind gentle shocks of electricity. "Absolutely. I see so much potential in you."

          Rhiannon found herself returning the smile and allowed her eyes to flutter shut as he took a step forward, sighing softly to herself when his lips brushed against hers. Though the Duncans and the Fords certainly weren't enemies, as they were actually working together at the time (that was how Rhiannon and Connor met), she still knew her parents would never approve of this on the long-run.

          As manipulative as Connor could be, so could Christopher and Madeleine. If things hadn't taken a turn for the worse later on and if the cooperation between the two families had kept going, they would have insisted for Rhiannon to find a way inside his head and lodge herself there. If Connor fell, so would his parents, furthering the growth of the Ford empire through the submission of the Duncans.

          It would have been the perfect plan if Connor hadn't outwitted her and her parents and screwed her over.

         Nevertheless, it was good while it lasted—depending on your definition of good, that is. Connor was the one who got her into bending the rules to fit her agenda when necessary and into taking risks (which, more often than not, would get her in serious trouble), but, at the time, it all felt so damn exciting. The noradrenaline levels in Rhiannon's body hit new highs whenever she was with him, and she still feels the effect of the withdrawal symptoms every now and then—especially when she least expects them to hit her.

          When they do, they hit her like a train. Like now, for example.

          It feels like they've pulled all the oxygen from her lungs, turning them from grapes into dates as they dry up. The repeated squeezing and releasing of her heart is downright exhausting, never giving her blood enough time to reach all her organs, almost as if her body is slowly shutting down.

          "Are you okay?" Zelda asks, leaning forward to set a hand on her knee, and pulling her out of her internal monologue. She wants to say something—anything—and pretend nothing is going on, as she has been taught to keep it all inside because breaking down will break your opportunities, but no words ever come out. She's like a fish out of water, a bird whose wings have been cut off midflight, and she's plummeting down.

          "What is he doing here?" Jude questions, as Isla tries to catch her breath. Sutton, who must have left the table at some point, since she's now standing up, carefully sets a glass of water in front of Rhiannon before returning to her seat. Her boots squeak. "I thought . . ."

          "I have no idea," Isla confesses, as Rhiannon cups the glass of water between both hands, and the beverage threatens to spill over the table and her jeans . . . and Zelda and Jude's hands, as they still haven't moved. "He saw me when I was leaving the auditorium and asked . . . asked me if I had seen you." She gestures towards Rhiannon with her head. "I told him no and I'm just praying he didn't see right through me. I took a shortcut to come here just to make sure he wouldn't randomly decide to follow me, but you never know what that guy is going to do."

          Rhiannon leans forward, face hidden behind her hands, and everything inside her threatens to collapse. She was supposed to be free from Connor here, finally being the bird he said he was as she escaped from her cage, and things certainly weren't supposed to turn out like this. She was supposed to be better and stronger than this, damn it.

          His voice echoes inside her brain, reminding her he still has full control over her, even after triggering all the events that led to the ruination of her own life and relationship with her family, and she remembers how weak she actually is—how weak she has always been, as the person she was when she was with him was never the real Rhiannon.

          He thought it was. He argued that was Rhiannon working at full potential, being the greatest person she could possibly be, but he didn't hesitate before throwing her under the bus when it became clear she was a threat. Connor has never done love or friendships, in a world defined by how successful you are, and Rhiannon still doesn't know why she thought it would be different with him—not that she was ever in love with him. She doubts there were any romantic feelings between the two of them, as they both used each other to achieve their goals, but she had never thought about screwing him over the way he did to her.

          "Do you need us to call someone?" Gabriella asks, making Rhiannon drop her hands, and her ice eyes are clouded with concern—something Rhiannon never thought she'd see. She's not used to seeing that in anyone who looks at her except her friends, period, and it seems so out of place in an interaction she's a part of. "Your parents?"

          "Gab," Laura scolds, and Gabriella's eyes widen as she covers her mouth with her hand, realizing her mistake. Rhiannon shakes her head, doubting she did it on purpose (in retrospective, Zelda's comment from earlier wasn't made out of malice either). "Look, I—uh, I mean, we're sort of . . . confused right now. You feel? Because we don't know what's going on, what happened or whom you're talking about, but, if there's anything we can do . . ."

          "I need to leave," Rhiannon declares, her voice not sounding nearly as steady as she wishes it did, and slides back, the legs of her chair scratching the floor. Zelda draws back her leg first, but Jude's accompanies Rhiannon's movements, sliding up to the back of her thigh. "I . . . I think I'm going back to my dorm. Thanks for asking us to sit with you. That was nice." The girls throw her a nervous smile, while Isla shoots her an incredulous look, eyebrows so furrowed they could turn the creases between her eyes permanent. "I—I have to go."

          "Rhea," Jude insists, getting up from his seat. "You're just going to walk away from this?"

          Her chest feels about to burst into flames.

          "What am I supposed to do?" she questions, keeping her voice low enough so that no one else in the café decides to pay too much attention to them. She's used to fading into the background and would much rather keep things that way. "I'm not going after Connor to confront him. It was my fault."

         "Having you run away from him is exactly what he wants," Jude remarks, following her outside, seemingly unfazed by the harsh gusts of wind blasting against their chests and faces. His cheeks are tinted pink thanks to it and there's the gentle tousling of his hair, but, other than that, he looks completely normal. "Avoiding him certainly—"

          "You don't know a damn thing about what he wants, Jude!" Jude doesn't wince when she raises her voice. "It wasn't your life he helped ruin and you certainly don't know him nearly as well as I do!"

          "You don't know him either, do you? If you did, you wouldn't have let him do what he did; you would have seen it coming miles away, right? You knew that guy was bad news, Rhea, ever since day one. You just didn't want to see it."

          "And what difference does that make now?" Rhiannon feels the despair dripping out of her words and it doesn't feel out of place in the slightest. She has always been a coward and a weakling, unable to stand up for herself or standing up for what really matters; she lets them step over her and push her to the sidelines. The only time she ever landed the main role in something, she played the protagonist and producer of her own destruction. "Rubbing it in my face doesn't make it better and it certainly doesn't make me want to go there and face him, because, guess what? Staring at the person who caused all of this won't help me heal, or whatever fake inspirational crap that you want to blurt out!"

          Jude clenches his jaw, hands shoved inside the pockets of his jeans, and Rhiannon desperately wants him to do anything but that—she has never been one to know how to properly deal with his silences after what happened back in high school, and, every time it slams against her face, she's pulled back to those days as if there was a time machine around, working as a vacuum.

          Jude, Jude, Jude. Even his name sounds magical—Jude, the prophet, the magician.

          "Love of my life," he once whispered, sometime during Christmas break of their sophomore year of college, scaring the hell out of her. When she turned around, he merely grinned, having picked up one of his cats (Ringo) to gently pet his head. "Look at him. Isn't he the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life?"

          Rhiannon, a dog person, staring at Jude and not at the damn cat, nodded. "Of course."

          Present Jude sighs. Present Rhiannon doesn't know what to say, but doubts Past or Future Rhiannon do. They're all the same in that aspect—they never know anything, which is the reason why they keep falling behind.

          The cortisol levels in her bloodstream explode.

          "Don't leave me alone, then," she whispers, in a shaky voice, and his hazel eyes instantly soften. He even pulls the knit scarf from around his neck to wrap it around hers, even though he has been coming down with a cold and should be protecting himself from anything that can threaten his health even further. "Jude . . ."

          "I'll be with you," he says, "through it all. But you'll have to be there too."

— ♡ —

          IT'S ONLY AROUND THE 20TH THAT RHIANNON DISCOVERS EXACTLY WHY CONNOR IS AT CROWCREST. She's late for her first lecture thanks to her mini-investigation, sponsored by Isla Guerreiro, Matteo Di Stefano and the various coffee machines scattered around the campus, but, in the end, she decides it was worth it.

          It helps her avoid him and makes her job a lot easier, and, though she's not technically tracking his movements, it helps her keep a list of all the places where she can't be if she doesn't want to run into him.

          Several heads turn in her direction when she steps inside the auditorium, moving as quickly as she can without disturbing the lecture, but she accidentally trips over her own feet while walking up a step. Someone snickers, Zelda tells them to shut up, and Rhiannon makes her way towards her seat, waking up Jude from his impromptu nap.

          It immediately raises several red flags, as he's usually not the type of person to do stuff like this, but she has learned to not insist instead of forcing herself to see things that might not even exist. That's Matteo's job, not hers, but he's still her best friend, above all things, and one of her various functions is to pay attention to warning signs. People can't be strong all the time, after all.

         "I know why he's here," she whispers, falling to her pillowed chair, and he rubs his eyes, staring down at the blank page of the notebook set in front of him. She can't blame him, though, as she has never cared that much about Calculus. "Connor. We've found out what he's doing here."

         "We?" Jude asks, in a slurred voice.

          "Yours truly, along with Isla and Matteo, but that's not relevant—Jude, focus," she adds, when his eyes briefly dart away from his, and curls her fingers around his wrist. "He's helping Northrop and McCall with their experiment. There's a house involved, and he's the one paying for everything."

          Jude narrows his eyes. "What now?"

          She bites down on her bottom lip. "I don't know. I was counting on you having a plan."