Be Brave With Me

Chapter Thirty-Two

"Uncle Henry! Aunt Isa! Have you guys seen my passport!?"

"No, poppet, I'm sorry!" Henry's voice rang out from the depths of the Plan B. "I'm still on the phone trying to secure you a time slot at the heli pad to get you out of here. I'm telling you, all these rich folks coming in for the race..."

Aunt Isa yelled from someplace else. "Sweetheart! You sure you're not hungry?" "It's one flight, a train ride, and two buses! It's gonna be a long day!"

Food was the last thing on Aura's mind right now. She needed to find her passport! She had to be at the airport in Nice in less than an hour!

As soon as she had stepped out of the Hôtel de Paris, she had known what she needed to do.

Return to the place she was meant to be.

She'd raced back here, fighting her way through the endless crush of people streaming to the race track, to find her godparents and explain everything. They hadn't blinked an eye.

"We only want you to be happy." "What do you need?"

Aura had slung her arms around both of them.

That's all she'd needed to hear.

She also needed to find her passport, though. On her search for it, she prowled through the salon and chucked pillows to the side. She dropped to her knees and checked beneath the couches. She couldn't find it anywhere. She could have sworn she had tucked it into one of the side pockets of...

Her eyes landed on her packed rucksack on top of the bar counter. She leapt for it, struggled with the clasps, got it open and dumped its contents out onto the carpet.

Thankfully, she had packed lightly for her trip back to Ravello.

No need to carry her heart. She had left it there with Theo.

Where was her damn passport?

"You looking for this?"

Jess stepped through opened glass panels into the salon and easily picked her passport out of the clothes and toiletries scattered across the carpet. She'd always known how to stay on top of Aura's life.

"You found it! Great!"

Jess didn't hand the blue square over, though. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and tucked it out of sight. "You can't just leave. You do know that, right?"

Aura sat back on her heels. She'd known this might be the hardest part of all the hard parts today. "Jess..."

"No. Aurelia. I'm serious. You do know that you can't just leave, right? The race is about to start. I've got everything planned out. You'll get changed, stat. Then we'll head over to the pit lane. I want a photo of you kissing Bastien good luck before he climbs into that car. You two together, it will blow up like crazy. Once he wins the race, I need you to-"

"Jess."

"- head down to the track-"

"Jess."

"It's all about timing-"

"Jess."

"We gotta head out now-"

"Will you listen for a second!? Jess, please!" She just had to say it - quick and painful, like ripping off a band-aid. "We won't leave for anything. I will leave in a minute to catch my flight."

Jess snapped her mouth shut, opened it in disbelief, closed it again. Finally, she spluttered. "What on earth are you talking about, Aurelia? You cannot be serious. Did you hit your head or something? What happened with your parents at breakfast this morning? You were gone before I got a chance to take a look at you. I should've come along."