Taylor enjoyed the gentle breeze blowing across Waikiki Beach as she ended the call with Harper and Charlie. So he wants a shark tooth necklace.

The waves sparkled in the sunlight, and the sound of the ocean was soothing. She and Colby had already spent a few days in Hawaii, and it felt like this vacation was getting better every day.

She stood at the shore and watched Colby effortlessly riding the waves. He was made for surfing, full of energy and joy. In these moments, he seemed free and carefree. Then she saw Sage coming towards her with his surfboard under his arm.

"Is your boyfriend out on the sea?" he asked, setting down the board and crossing his arms.

"Yup."

"Which one is he? I’d like to meet this surf pro."

Crap. She should have seen this coming. How was she going to explain this now? Over the past few days, Sage had become a really good friend, but she could never tell him the truth. After all, he couldn't see Colby and would think Taylor was crazy.

She thought quickly while smiling as calmly as possible. "Oh, he's the guy on the blue board with the black shorts." She pointed vaguely towards the surfers. Of course, Sage couldn’t see Colby, but he didn’t know that.

Sage raised an eyebrow and looked out to sea. "Blue board, black shorts, huh?" He seemed skeptical, and Taylor knew he wouldn't give up easily. And if she had learned anything about Sage so far, it was that he was super smart despite his laid-back demeanor.

"Yeah, exactly," she confirmed quickly. "He's pretty good, right?" What was she doing?

Sage slowly shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. "I don't see a blue board with black shorts."

"Then you need glasses if you can't see him."

"You just think I can’t see him."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind. Ready for the water?" Sage picked up his board again.

"I'll be right there. I'm just waiting for him a bit longer; he’ll surely want to know how things are going back home."

Sage shrugged. "Okay, you'll see me out there." And with that, he headed into the water.

Taylor didn’t wait long before Colby came out of the sea, of course with a grin that filled his entire face.

When he held the surfboard, it seemed like others really couldn’t see it. At least Taylor hadn’t been asked why there was a board floating next to her. Very practical. Especially since she was sure Sage was watching her from the sea, trying to spot her boyfriend.

"What did they say?" Colby asked, curious.

"Harper didn’t know, and right now they’re searching through that big leak."

"The one from the FBI? What does that have to do with me?"

"It would be an explanation. If the FBI says don’t reveal the location, no one would have known about your crime scene. How were the waves?"

"Awesome, but I stopped now." He pointed to the sky. "A storm is coming soon."

Taylor only saw the blue sky. "How can you tell?"

"A good surfer can sense it." And he grinned smugly. "Your surf coach doesn’t seem to notice it though."

Taylor glanced at Sage, who was mastering a huge wave as if it were child’s play. "My surf coach is still pretty good," she said, smiling.

Colby shrugged, just like Sage had. "If you say so."

"My God, you guys are really similar."

"Pff, me and him?" the frat boy laughed incredulously. "No way."

"You two would probably get along great if you both weren’t so cocky. Oh, and if he could see you, of course." As soon as they spoke of the devil, Sage came striding out of the water. "Back already?"

"A storm is coming." Colby snorted, annoyed. "We should reschedule our lesson today."

"That soon? Is that possible?"

"Yeah, sure it is," assured the man. "A lot will be washed up, so watch your step the next few days."

"Got it."

Sage nodded and dried off with a towel. "See you tomorrow morning, Taylor. And bring your boyfriend along for once," he winked before leaving.

"Bring your boyfriend along for once," Colby mimicked him.

"I wonder where he lives. He always walks, so it can't be far."

"Godzilla mostly lives at the bottom of the sea." With that, Colby earned a playful shoulder punch from Taylor.

The two surfer boys were right. A few hours later, it was pouring down like crazy, and the palm trees outside the Kai Lani were bending in the wind so much that Taylor thought they would soon break.

She and her Ghost Boy were safely in their suite as the storm outside grew more intense. The rain pounded against the windows, and the wind howled through the plants outside.

"This is really intense," Taylor said, turning away from the window. "I hope it doesn't get too bad."

Colby shrugged. "We're at the Kai Lani Resort, one of the best hotels on the island. They’ll have it under control."

Taylor smiled weakly. "Yeah, you're right. They probably deal with storms like this often."

They watched the storm together for a while. The waves were wild and crashed high onto the beach, while the sky was shrouded in deep gray.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"It was so clear earlier."

"That's island weather for you." Colby gently pulled Taylor close and put an arm around her as they watched the storm together.

Taylor rested her head on his chest. She enjoyed the silence between them, broken only by the thunder of the storm. But the silence didn't last long as Taylor's phone rang, and Harper's name appeared on the display.

"Don’t they realize we're cuddling, huh?" Colby grumbled, annoyed. "They should cockblock someone else."

Taylor leaned forward and answered. "Hi, Harper. Is it really important because—what." She immediately sat up and looked at Colby, confused.

"What?" he asked quickly. By now, he was very good at reading his girl’s facial expressions. Harper and Charlie must have found something. Something bad.

Taylor put the call on speaker. "Okay, now he can hear you. Please say that again."

"We went through the leaks," Harper began again, breathing heavily. "Colby, they have been watching you. For at least 12 years. The oldest document we found with your name is from 1991."

Colby froze for a moment as the words slowly sank in. 1991. He was still a teenager then.

Taylor grabbed his hand worriedly. Her eyes searched his as they both waited for Harper's next words.

"There are a creepy number of texts and reports on observations, monitoring of digital traces, bank accounts, travel, everything. They had really been watching everything."

"But why?" Colby finally burst out, his voice shaky with confusion and anger. "Why were they watching me? I'm not a criminal, especially not as a kid. I get it if they looked into me after I disappeared, but over ten years before?"

"That's the weird thing," Harper's voice trembled. "On the day you disappeared, the documentation stops. Completely. And you're not listed under the missing persons cases."

"Then where were these things?" Colby countered, confused. "The documents. Where were they filed if not under missing persons? I am missing."

Harper sighed through the phone. "We don't know for sure. The folder names are all encrypted. But they were definitely in a separate area, not categorized under missing persons. It seems they placed your file there specifically, outside the usual classifications."

Colby frowned. "That makes no sense. Why would they do that? And if they’ve been watching me all this time… couldn’t they have been the ones to kill me? Or not?"

Taylor looked at him sadly. It pained her to see him like this. "That doesn't have to mean anything," she tried to reassure him.

"Yes, yes it does." Colby closed his eyes angrily, trying to think. "This can't be real. What does the FBI want from me?"

"What worries me even more…" Harper continued, "Who’s to say they aren’t still watching you? I mean, we’re talking about the FBI. There must be some… agents? Like, ones who can see ghosts too. Sure, there are no documents anymore, but it could be possible, right?"

"Okay, you know what? I'm on vacation," Colby suddenly said in an angry tone. "Harper, Charlie, thanks for telling me now. But I’ll deal with this after Hawaii."

"But—" Taylor began, but Colby quickly interrupted her.

"No. I don’t care. As long as I’m here with you in Hawaii, I don’t care."

Taylor could feel the anger and confusion in his voice. He was overwhelmed by the revelations and needed time to process everything. She watched him as he turned away and paced around the room, trying to calm himself.

Harper and Charlie were still on the phone, an uncomfortable silence filling the room. Taylor felt torn between her loyalty to Colby and the urge to learn more about the eerie revelations. She didn't want to leave him alone, but she also knew that Harper and Charlie had found important information that couldn't be ignored.

"Colby," she began cautiously. "I understand that you don’t want to discuss this now, but we should still talk about it. It might be important to find out why the FBI has been watching you for so long."

He turned to her, his expression hard and determined. "I don’t want to hear any more about it, Taylor. Not now."

"But it concerns you," she replied gently.

"I know, but right now I just want to be here, with you, in this moment." Colby stepped closer, his voice calmer but still full of emotion. "I want to enjoy the vacation with you, without these shadows hanging over us. Don’t you understand that?"

"We should at least keep it in mind," Harper finally suggested. "We can continue here while you enjoy your last two days. You're flying back tomorrow anyway. These documents have been around for 30 years, two more days won’t make it any worse."

Taylor looked at Colby, who was still struggling with mixed feelings. She sensed his determination to let the topic rest for now and respected his wish not to let the vacation be further overshadowed by the revelations. But she also knew that the revelation of being monitored for so many years raised serious questions that couldn't be simply set aside.

"Harper’s right," she finally said after thinking for a moment. "But it won’t hurt if we keep it in mind." She walked over to Colby and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. "We can deal with it later, when we’re back home."

"The fucking FBI killed me." He hit his hands against his head. "The FBI."

And with that, Taylor realized that Colby's "Not now" was just a way to distract himself because he couldn't grasp it. In truth, he absolutely wanted to talk about it but couldn't process it properly. She had never seen him like this before.

"We don’t know that for sure—"

"Yes!" Colby shouted in his demonic voice. "I—I need to be alone now. Sorry." Instead of teleporting, he just walked out of the suite. Why didn’t he teleport? Was he feeling that bad?

"C-Colby! Wait! The storm, you idiot!" Taylor growled angrily, he couldn’t be serious. He just took off. She said goodbye to Harper and Charlie, grabbed her raincoat from her suitcase, put on the first shoes she found, her flip-flops, and ran after the ghost.

"Damn it, Colby!" she called as she stormed out of the suite, her steps echoing on the polished marble of the resort. She was determined to follow him, no matter where he went.

Taylor watched as Colby strode through the elegant corridors of the hotel, not paying her any attention. Without hesitation, he pushed through the double doors in the lobby and stepped out into the wild storm. Okay, he could still touch things, that had to be a good sign.

Taylor hesitated for a moment before following him. The cool spray of the rain hit her face as she stepped over the hotel's threshold. The wind howled around her, and the pounding sound of the rain was everywhere.

There he was. The wind whipped the rain horizontally across the resort grounds, but Taylor was too focused on Colby to let it stop her.

She rushed out of the property and saw him heading towards the beach. The storm had washed up several objects, which lay scattered around, soaked by the sea. Colby had now reached the water, where he finally stopped and stared captivated at the raging sea.

"Colby!" Taylor called again, her voice swallowed by the storm's gusts. She ran as fast as she could across the sand, her flip-flops barely helping on the wet ground and soon she even lost both shoes. But that didn’t matter now.

"Colby, let's go back inside!" She took strained steps through the sand and felt herself step on sharp objects multiple times. "Colby!"

"What does the damn FBI want from me?!" he shouted at the sea, not even acknowledging Taylor. He was completely lost in his own thoughts and emotions, his gaze fixed on the stormy horizon.

Taylor took strained steps through the sand when she suddenly stepped on something else. A sharp pain shot through her foot and she screamed in agony. She fell to the ground and stared at the object, which looked like a dead, crusty fish. Her entire foot was covered in spikes.

Colby turned abruptly when he heard Taylor's scream of pain. His expression shifted from anger to concern as he saw what had happened. He rushed over and knelt beside her in the sand.

"Taylor! What happened?!" he asked worriedly, his hands shaking slightly as he tried to help her, but she only gasped in pain as he pulled out the first spike, leaving a bloody wound.

"P-pull them out, damn it, it hurts so much!" She doubled over in pain, tears streaming down her face. "W-what is that?!"

"I-I don't know. Come on, I’ll carry you to the resort, I’m so sorry, I—"

"N-no! Not to the resort! They'll see me floating into the hotel! No!"

"I-I don't care about that right now, I—"

"Taylor?" a voice suddenly called from a distance. "Taylor, is that you?"

"Sage!" she shouted in relief. "Here!"

Sure enough, there he was, his dark hair drenched from the rain. And this time, he was even wearing a top, an old leather jacket. "What happened?" Instead of looking at Taylor, he stared directly at Colby, who looked at him in disbelief. Then he looked at Taylor. "What? You think I don’t know your boyfriend is a ghost? We’ll clear that up later, what happened?"

"I-I stepped on something—"

"Stonefish. Fuck," he said as he examined Taylor's foot. "They're really poisonous." He looked seriously at Colby. "We need to carry her. To my place, I have an antidote that’ll help. Quickly."

"Y-you can see me! Stonefish?! W-what does that mean?!"

"It means if we don’t hurry, she’ll die in your fucking arms. Come on."