The Billionaire’s Secret Heirs (Celine and Hunter) novel Chapter 199

Chapter 199

~CELINE POV-

#

The Vegas Strip stretched before us like a river of light, tourists and locals weaving between casinos and street performers.

Hunter kept my hand firmly in his as we walked, his thumb tracing circles across my knuckles.

“Hungry?” he asked, stopping in front of a hot dog cart that looked like it had been there since the seventies.

Nblinked at him. “You want to eat street food?”

65

13

“I want to do everything with you that I should have done before.” He ordered two hot dogs with everything, ignoring the vendor’s shocked face when he pulled out his platinum card for a five–dollar purchase.

We found a bench near the Bellagio, and I watched in fascination as Hunter Reid, heir to billions, got mustard on his designer shirt

and didn’t care.

“This is surreal,” I murmured, taking a bite of what was surprisingly the best hot dog I’d ever had.

“Good surreal or bad surreal?”

I studied his face in the fountain lights. The desperate edge from earlier had softened into something warmer, more hopeful.

“Good, I think. Different.”

We walked to Fremont Street, where the LED canopy painted us in shifting colors. Hunter bought me a tacky “I Love Vegas” t–shirt and a snow globe with a plastic Elvis inside.

“Your mother would die if she saw you right now,” I laughed, clutching my ridiculous souvenirs.

“Good.” His smile was fierce. “She’s had enough say in my life. Tonight is about what I want. And I want you.”

The words should have made me melt, but the memory of his earlier confession still stung. “Even though I’m complicated? Even though I have baggage?”

Hunter stopped walking so abruptly that I nearly stumbled. He turned to face me, his hands framing my face with desperate gentleness.

“Celine, listen to me. What I said tonight–that wasn’t me. That was fear talking. Fear that maybe you were right to consider

someone else, someone easier.”

“Hunter….”

“No, let me finish.” His eyes were bright with unshed tears. “You chose me tonight. In front of everyone, you chose me. And instead of being grateful, instead of telling you that, in this life or any other I would always choose you back, I tried to hurt you first.”

The breath caught in my throat. “You were hurt too. The question about Clancey…..”

“Was honest. And I should have respected that honesty instead of punishing you for it.” He pressed his forehead against mine.

“You’re not complicated, Celine. You’re tricky. You’re layered and interesting and real. Mia is simple–beautiful and empty and forgettable. You’re unforgettable.”

1/4

09:18 Wed, 3 Sept RD.

Chapter 199

3

#

We stood there in the middle of the tourist chaos, just breathing each other in. Around us, Vegas hummed with possibility and

second chances.

“Come with me,” Hunter whispered. “I want to show you something.”

65%

He led me to the High Roller observation wheel, somehow securing us a private cabin that rose slowly above the glittering city.

As Vegas spread out below us like a jewelry box, Hunter reached into his jacket pocket.

My heart stopped.

“I’ve been carrying this around for weeks,” he said quietly, pulling out a small black velvet box. “Waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect plan, the perfect everything.”

“Hunter…..”

+13

“But tonight taught me something. There is no perfect. There’s just us, and what we choose to build together.” He dropped to one knee in our slowly ascending cabin, the entire Strip rotating around us like the world’s most expensive backdrop.

“Celine Brown, you make me better than I thought I could be. You see past every wall I’ve built and love me anyway. You chose me tonight when you could have walked away, and I want to spend the rest of my life proving that I’ll always choose you back.”

The ring was stunning–a perfect solitaire that caught the city lights and threw them back like captured stars.

But it was his face that made me cry, the vulnerability and hope and desperate love written in every line.

“Will you marry me?” he whispered. “Not someday, not when it’s convenient or expected or proper. Tonight. Right now. In the most ridiculous, imperfect, absolutely perfect way possible.”

1 stared at him, my heart hammering so hard I was sure he could hear it over the cabin’s gentle hum.

“You want to get married in Vegas? Tonight?”

“I want to marry you everywhere, every day, in every way possible. But yeah, I want to start in Vegas. Tonight. Before anything else can go wrong, before anyone else can interfere, before we lose our nerve.”

The observation wheel reached its peak, the city spread out beneath us like a promise.

In the distance, I could see the lights of the wedding chapels, the neon hearts and plastic flowers and Elvis impersonators that made Vegas famous for love stories that started with bad decisions and ended with happy endings.

“Yes,” I whispered, and then louder, “Yes, Hunter Reid. I’ll marry you in Vegas. I’ll marry you anywhere.”

He slipped the ring onto my finger with shaking hands, then stood to kiss me so thoroughly that I forgot we were suspended two hundred feet above the Strip

When we finally broke apart, both breathless and giddy, Hunter was grinning like a teenager who’d just gotten away with something spectacular.

“I know just the place,” he said.

The Little White Wedding Chapel looked exactly like every Vegas wedding cliche come to life.

2/4

G

3

65%

+13

Chapter 199

Pink neon hearts blinked in the windows, plastic flowers decorated the entrance, and somewhere inside, Elvis was singing “Love Me Tender” in a voice that sounded nothing like the King.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked as Hunter paid the chapel fee. “Because this is definitely not what your mother pictured for your wedding.”

“That’s exactly why it’s perfect.” He squeezed my hand. “This is our story, Celine. Not theirs.”

The chapel provided a simple white veil that clipped into my hair and a bouquet of silk roses that smelled faintly of artificial

vanilla.

Hunter pulled off his jacket and only in the t–shirt he wore underneath, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him in weeks.

Our witnesses were an elderly couple from Nebraska who’d been married fifty–three years and were renewing their own vows.

“You two remind us of us,” the woman, Dorothy, said with tears in her eyes. “Young and crazy and so in love it hurts to look at.”

The Elvis officiant was actually pretty good, his voice warm and genuine as he guided us through vows that were both traditional and uniquely ours.

“Do you, Hunter, take Celine to be your wife, to love and honor and choose every single day, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, through complications and baggage and anything else life throws your way?”

Hunter’s voice was steady and sure. “I do. I choose her. Always.”

“And do you, Celine, take Hunter to be your husband, to love and support and believe in, through good times and bad, through fear and doubt and all the ways he might mess up in the future?”

I laughed through my tears. “I do. I choose him too. Always.”

The kiss that sealed our marriage was soft and sweet and tasted like promises. The certificate we signed felt like the most important document either of us had ever touched.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Elvis announced with a flourish, “I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Hunter Reid!”

We walked out of that tacky little chapel as husband and wife, both giddy with the spontaneity and rightness of it all. The Vegas night felt different now–not chaotic but magical, full of possibility and new beginnings.

“So, Mrs, Reid,” Hunter said, stopping to spin me around under a flickering neon sign. “What do you want to do first as a married

woman?”

1 looked at my new husband–disheveled and happy and more beautiful than any man had a right to be–and felt my heart overflow with joy.

“Everything,” I said simply. “I want to do everything with you.”

And as Vegas pulsed around us with its proinise that anything could happen, that reinvention was always possible, that sometimes the best stories started with the worst nights, I knew we were exactly where we belonged.

Together. Finally, completely, ridiculously together.