“Trouble in paradise? Cade is done playing daddy to Grant Maxwell’s mini-me.”
—accompanied by a photo of Cade’s scowling face as he holds Bodhi, dragging Tatum O’Malley behind him, exiting DEN airport
Late February
dylan
If you’d have told me six years ago that by the time I was twenty-two, I would be the mother of a four-and-a-half-year old, that I’d turned my back on my movie career—the one thing I wanted since my first role on the small screen—and that I was seriously in love with a movie star slash extreme sport athlete, I’d have looked at you like you were crazy.
Me? Trusted to raise and parent a kid who was only a few months away from being a kindergartener, when I was hardly more than a baby myself?
Me? A small-screen gal, having a chance on the big screen, and then giving it up?
Me? An otherwise average girl, long-term dating the youngest man to be dubbed Sexiest Man Alive?
Nah.
Never.
…But it was true.
And the proof is right here, surrounding me.
“Cade! How was—”
“Cade Johnston. Cade! Is it true—”
“Jesus,” the man of the hour mutters beside me, his hand tight around mine while he holds my son in his other arm. Bodhi is getting too big to be carried—in fact, he hates it—but the moment we stepped off the plane and out of Denver International on our way to the weekend’s motocross race, we’d been bombarded with reporters and cameras, and there was no way Cade was going to let Bodhi get caught up in the shuffle.
“Tatum!” A reporter changes tactics—which is so the wrong move.
“Not happening, bud,” Cade growls.
Cade has two buttons that reporters know better than to press—me, and the little boy we’re raising together. He’ll talk about his movies, he’ll talk about his racing career. Hell, he’ll even smile and wave if a photographer lurks behind a potted plant at The Grove when he and I have an adult, Bodhi-less, dinner.
But ask about me, about my filming career, about whether or not I am still in contact with Grant Maxwell, Bodhi’s “biological father”…
Mean Cade comes out.
It’s not like he’s one of those A-listers who runs down paparazzi with his car or backhands a camera out of a photographer’s hands.
But he certainly tells them off.
You don’t bring up the Grant Maxwell charges.
You don’t bring up the fact that Bodhi does not carry Cade’s last name or genes, which can sometimes be painfully evident when you look at the boy.
You don’t comment about Bodhi calling Cade “daddy”—something that Cade and I are more than comfortable, ecstatic, with.
You don’t ask snide questions about sex tapes.
And you certainly don’t try to switch tactics and ask me any of those things.
Luckily, we’re only a few steps away from our waiting vehicle and, the back door already open, my boyfriend of nearly five years releases our handhold to allow me to climb inside. Next, he shifts Bodhi into my arms so I can secure him into his center-placed booster seat. Cade closes the door, and both he and our driver, John—who is part of the racing team perks—round the front of the black SUV. John opens the opposite back door for Cade but allows him to close the door behind himself.
Soon, John is in the driver’s seat, Cade is behind him, and I have Bodhi safely secured in his booster.
“Your bags will be delivered in an hour,” John tells us, looking back into the rearview mirror rather than turning in his seat.
“I didn’t think it would be this crazy.” Cade twists in the bench seat to look out the rear window as John maneuvers the SUV away from the curb.
I’d had a feeling it would be this crazy.
Looking at Cade’s profile over Bodhi’s once spikey brown hair, I grin wide. “You did just announce your last major film for the foreseeable future.” I reach over to run my fingers through my son’s hair. Between pulling his Under Armour hoodie off and on again, and the near-constant playing with the hood when it was on when we were in the air—something that was egged on by Cade pulling the strings tight and making it nearly impossible for Bodhi to see, where belly laughs ensued—my son’s hair is now a mess that resembles what it looks like after a nap.
The boy does bedhead hard.
Cade is still watching out the back window, even though we are now well away from the terminal pick-up. “And you hinted toward voice overs, basically telling the world you signed on to your first project in over five years.” Cade’s voice seems to be in perma-mumble-grumble at the moment and it makes me want to laugh. Grumpy Cade is a funny Cade.
“Nobody cares about me anymore,” I say even though I really want to just laugh.
I can’t exactly say my feelings are hurt about being a forgotten actress.
Not in the slightest.
After spending nearly an entire year on every headline for something I didn’t do, I am more than a little happy to be forgotten about.
You see, a little over five years ago I signed on for my first major motion film.
Before then, I’d been a small-screen actress, having a long-term recurring role in a medical drama starting when I was in elementary school. At my initial screen call, it was evident that I would be in the business for a long time—at least, so says my agent—but with my age, she was concerned about life in general. School. College. My parents’ middle-America income and home.
At the urging of her, I took on a creative reconstruction of my name: Tatum O’Malley.
Anyway. I digress.
Five years ago.
I’d signed on to this huge project. It was big. It was supposed to be my big break, my push away from small screen and into A-list territory. It was a fantastic film, went on to win awards, even.
Not that I was around for any of that.
Because after wrapping, I was invited by my co-star, Grant Maxwell, to a “wrap party”.
The problem was, the wrap party wasn’t really a wrap party, but a sex party that he and his wife put on, and it was one in a string of illegal sex parties where trafficking happened more often than not.
So, when I was photographed drunkenly hanging off Grant’s arm, he let the world—and me—believe that I slept with him out of my own freewill. He allowed the public to label me a homewrecker, saying that I was the reason paparazzi kept photographing his wife crying in public.
Then, two months later when I found out I was pregnant, I went into hiding.
My reputation was ruined, and the world finding out that a baby had been conceived that ill-fated night would have been the final nail on my coffin.
But then I met Cade, and he helped me realize that maybe I wasn’t the bad guy.
I may not have been able to remember that night, but sleeping with a married man was not something I would have done. I was a better person than that.
A few months before Bodhi was born, the truth was revealed when one of the Maxwell parties was busted. Not only was a trafficking exchange happening, but dozens of sex tapes were found—one of which, a drunk and clearly not consenting seventeen year old Tatum O’Malley, legal name Dylan Tate O’Neill, was front and center.
Grant and Aja Maxwell admitted to everything and are both spending some of their better years in prison. I also received a hefty settlement, ensuring that Bodhi was well-cared for—right after the judge terminated Grant’s parental rights, due to Bodhi being conceived not only from rape, but from statutory rape.
I hadn’t wanted the Maxwell’s money though, so I donated it all—something that the tabloids couldn’t get enough of.
Just like they couldn’t get enough of Bodhi’s birth, or mine and Cade’s decision to officially move in with each other, and not into one of our then-apartments, but rather into a small house just outside of Brentwood.
Then the most amazing thing happened. After a year of living together and raising the bastard son of the real villain of Hollywood…
Well, no one cared anymore.
I mean, they cared when Cade started up his motocross career again.
And they became curious when, two years, three years, four years had passed, and I still wasn’t taking movie scripts or television roles, not even reviving my role on the medical drama that launched my career.
The world couldn’t understand why Cade and I were simply living together. We were in a committed relationship—regardless of how some so-called reporters spun things—and there wasn’t a proposal nor a marriage. Reporters tried to pull the whole “homewrecker to moocher” thing, but Cade put the kibosh to that right away, too.
With Bodhi being young—and hell, Cade and I were young too—this was what worked for us. I was basically a stay-at-home mom, who was free to travel whenever it called for. Cade was dad, I was mom, and we were raising Bodhi to be a well-mannered, well-rounded boy. With Cade’s schedule as it was, Bodhi and I were able to go with Cade to each of his film locations as well as to all of his races.
We were a typical road-family.
This was going to be our last year—our last Supercross and Motocross season—being able to travel with Cade though, with Bodhi starting kindergarten in the upcoming fall term. Depending on what school we enrolled him into, Bodhi could even be starting school during the final weeks of motocross season.
It was because of these upcoming changes that Cade decided he was done with acting—for now. When motocross ends in August, he’ll take a few months off to just be a family guy, and then he’s off to Vancouver in October for his last film, which he’ll be finishing with right before Supercross starts up in January.
Riding is his true passion, and I could not be prouder of him for excelling as he has these last three racing seasons.
The man is seriously amazing on the back of a bike, even after taking a many years hiatus from the sport. No one expected him to come out of racing retirement, and not only did he un-retire, but he took his place back in the rankings.
And the way he looks in the summer sun, in just his race bottoms…
“I care about you,” Cade growls, bringing me back to present.
“I care!” Bodhi mimics his favorite person, and I can’t help but let the laugh out this time.
“You boys are all that matter.”
It’s because of Bodhi, in fact, that I decided to look at, and then accept, a role in next year’s animated retelling of the biggest children’s book of the year. It was a book that Cade and I could probably read to him without the book in front of us, we’d read it so often.
I’d figured a voice-over role wasn’t a terrible way to dip my toes back into the Hollywood scene and the time commitment wasn’t quite as strenuous as a true person role—which was a major thing to consider. I don’t want to be working when Bodhi starts kindergarten, and Cade starts filming in the fall so that left me limited in time.
“Relax, Cade,” I murmur, good naturedly. I reach my arm behind Bodhi, resting it along the back of the seat so I can play with the long, curling ends of hair around Cade’s ear.
I like motorcycle-riding Cade.
I mean, I like clean-cut-for-a-serious-movie Cade too, but the hair that was a good two-months past due for a haircut, and the scruff on his jawline…
It’s my favorite look on him.
“I just wish they’d leave you two alone.” He tips his head forward as my nails gently comb through the ends of his hair at his nape now.
“They have been.”
“They need to keep doing it.”
“Oh, caveman Cade,” I taunt with a smile, which only earns me a smoldering look. I know that if Bodhi wasn’t sitting between us, the man’s lips would easily find mine. Proving that, much like a caveman, I belong to him.
“I love you,” he mouths across the expanse of SUV, and I breathe the words back.
“What about me?” Bodhi asks loudly, knowing this exchange well. Even John chuckles from the front.
“Love you most,” I tell my son, only to be outdone by Cade.
“Love you even more.”
Smiling, I rest back into the seat, my hands folded in my lap.
No.
If you’d told me who I’d be today, five, six, seven years ago, I’d have thought you were crazy.
But I wouldn’t change these years for anything.