The Truth Behind The Door

Chapter One 

The Truth Behind the Door

Phina’s POV 

The camera hit the ground with a crack that echoed through my chest.

I didn't pick it up. I couldn't. My hands were frozen at my sides, my fingers still curled in the shape of something I'd been holding moments ago. The lens, my lens, the one I'd saved three months of tips from the café to buy stared up at me from the floor, shattered into a web of glass that caught the moonlight like a fractured mirror.

But I wasn't looking at the camera.

I was looking at them.

Alaric stood in the center of the small storage room, his back against a stack of old yearbooks, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. His hair was mussed, his lips were swollen, and his arm was wrapped around someone I knew too well.

Flair.

My best friend.

She was wearing the dress she'd begged me to help her pick out. Emerald green, backless, the one I'd told her made her look like a movie star. Her dark hair was tangled, her makeup smudged, and she was looking at me with something that wasn't quite guilt. It was closer to pity.

"Phina," Alaric said, and his voice was so casual, so unbothered, that I almost laughed. "You're early."

Early.

I was early.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe. The air in the storage room was thick with something I didn't want to name, perfume and sweat and the cloying sweetness of betrayal. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, a frantic drumbeat that drowned out the distant bass of the DJ's music.

"Early," I repeated. The word tasted like ash.

"Phina, listen." Flair stepped forward, her hand reaching out like she was about to touch me.

"Don't." My voice came out sharp, cutting through the space between us like a blade. 

"Don't you dare touch me."

She flinched. Good.

"Phina, it's not what it looks like," Alaric said, pushing off from the yearbooks. He was adjusting his shirt now, buttoning it with the kind of casual efficiency that told me he'd done this before. Many times. 

"We were just"

"Just what?" I felt something crack inside me. Not my heart, that had already shattered into a million pieces on the floor next to my camera. No, this was something else. Something deeper. 

"Just fucking? Just betraying me? Just making me look like the biggest idiot in this entire school?"

"Phina, calm down."

"Calm down!" I laughed, and the sound was hollow, wrong. 

"You've been my boyfriend for two years. Two years, Alaric. And Flair.” My mouth opened and closed many times trying to find the exact word.

Flair’s eyes glistened with tears, but she didn't look sorry. She looked like she was waiting for me to get over it.

"Phina, I never meant for you to find out like this," she said softly.

 "I was going to tell you. We both were."

"Tell me?" I was shaking now, my entire body vibrating with something I couldn't control. 

"You were going to tell me that you've been sleeping with my boyfriend? How generous of you."

Alaric stepped forward, his hand outstretched. "Look, Phina, you need to understand."

"Understand what?" I jerked away from him, my back hitting the doorframe. "That you never loved me? That I was just some convenient placeholder until something better came along?"

His expression flickered. Just for a second. And then it settled into something cold, something I'd never seen on his face before.

"To be fair," he said, and his voice was ice, "you weren't exactly the easiest person to be with."

The words hit me like a physical blow.

"What?"

"You heard me." He crossed his arms, and suddenly he wasn't the sweet, thoughtful boyfriend I'd spent two years with. He was a stranger. A monster wearing Alaric's face. "You're always hiding behind that camera. Always running away from real life. I got tired of waiting for you to actually show up."

"I showed up tonight," I said, my voice cracking. "I came here tonight to document prom. For us. For the memories."

"Memories." He laughed, and there was nothing kind about it. "You think I want memories with you? Phina, you're a mere photographer. You live in the past. You capture moments instead of living them. And honestly?" He tilted his head, his eyes scanning me like I was something pathetic. "You didn't actually expect me to marry you, did you?"

The question hung in the air, sharp and brutal.

Marry him.

I'd never said that word out loud. But I'd thought it. In quiet moments, when he was sleeping next to me, when he was holding my hand, when he was promising me forever. I'd thought it, and I'd believed it.

"I never said I was going to marry you, did I?"

"You didn't have to." He was mocking me now, his lips curling into a cruel smile. "I saw the way you looked at me. The way you planned our future in your head like I had no say in it. Like I was just some character in your little story."

"Alaric, stop," Flair said, but there was no real conviction in her voice. She was just going through the motions.

"No, let him talk." I forced the words out through the rage building in my chest. "I want to hear it. All of it."

I didn't know what I was about to do. But I knew it wouldn't be pretty.

"Look at you," Flair said suddenly, her voice dripping with contempt. She stepped forward, her green dress shimmering in the dim light. "Standing there like a wounded puppy. Did you really think you could keep him? You, with your broken family and your pathetic little camera obsession?"

I flinched. My family. My mother, who worked double shifts to keep a roof over our heads. My father, who'd died when I was twelve and left us with nothing but memories and debt.

"Don't talk about my family," I said quietly.

"Why not?" Flair’s smile was sharp, predatory. "It's not like they're anything to be proud of. Your mother can barely look at you without flinching.  Maybe you should ask yourself why.”

 And your father."

"Shut up."

"He probably died just to get away from you."

I lunged.

I don't remember making the decision. One second I was standing in the doorway, and the next I was across the room.

Alaric caught my wrist. He was stronger than I expected, his grip like iron around my arm.

"Don't," he said, and there was real warning in his voice now. "Don't make this worse than it already is."

"Worse?" I laughed, and the sound was unhinged, wild. "You think this can get worse?"

"Just go home, Phina," Flair said, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. "Go back to your sick, pathetic family. Go back to your camera and your little fantasies."

"Or you know what? Why don't you just pick up your camera? And just shoot it. Start rolling." She gestured to the broken lens on the floor. "I bet the whole world would love to see you as an opportunist. Picture it: the girl who filmed her boyfriend with her best friend. That way, your career, your precious camera career, would blow up. It would trend. People would acknowledge you and your dreams would finally come to pass."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I whispered. "You'd love to watch me become the villain in my own story."

"I'm just giving you options." 

“You know what hurts most?”

Alaric's smile returned, slow and cruel. “That it was Flair?”

“No.”

His smile faltered.

“I wasted two years believing you were worth my time, my life, and my future.” I swallowed, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “You weren't.”

For the first time that night, he had nothing to say.

“You didn't deserve me, Alaric. You never did.”

They pushed past me, through the door, back into the bright lights and loud music of the prom. I heard them laughing as they walked away.

The storage room was silent except for my breathing, ragged and uneven. I sank to my knees and reached for my camera. The body was cracked and dented, the lens fractured, but somehow, the screen flickered back to life. I stared at it. The last photograph I'd taken was still there. At first, all I could see was the blurred crowd. Then I noticed the eyes. Two points of blue staring back at me from the darkness. They seemed to glow from somewhere beneath the image, almost alive.

I leaned closer.

For a split second, the blue eyes burned brighter, and I finally made out the shape of a wolf staring directly into the camera.

“What the hell…?”