Yo, just in my feels

The Basketball Boy

September, 2013

The first week after summer break always felt a little unreal.

For Isabella, summer had been made of airports, ferry rides, and salt carried on the wind. One week she would be in another country with relatives she only saw once a year; the next she would be at her family’s beach house in Valencia, falling asleep to the distant rhythm of waves and the murmur of her cousins arguing over card games long after midnight.

It had been a beautiful summer, the kind that felt endless while you were living it.

Returning to school felt like waking from a dream and being asked to remember what day it was.

The corridors of SEK El Castillo buzzed with life. Students were spilling out of classrooms, comparing tans, exchanging stories, showing each other photos from holidays they would never stop talking about. Laughter bounced off the stone walls, and the late-morning sunlight poured through the long arched windows, turning the polished floors gold.

Isabella threaded through the crowd, adjusting the strap of her bag against her shoulder.

Then, through the sea of voices, one comment rose above the rest.

“That’s him, right? The basketball boy?”

Her amber eyes shifted before she even realized she was searching.

“The guy from the notice board?”

“You forgot to mention he’s handsome. What the hell?”

A chorus of giggles followed, and Isabella’s gaze landed on the tall Slovenian boy walking down the center of the corridor.

There you are… the basketball boy. Luka. Luka with a K.

She remembered the name from the brief encounter they’d had months earlier in the arts corridor, when he had still looked lost and skinny and slightly overwhelmed by everything around him.

Now he looked… different.

A dark sports bag was slung across his chest, a basketball tucked beneath one arm. Around him walked several boys from the Real Madrid academy program, all wearing the white-and-blue training tops with the unmistakable golden crest stitched over the heart. They were talking over one another, loud and animated, while Luka listened more than he spoke.

Yet, he was still the center of the group.

Not because he demanded attention. He didn’t. It was simply that attention seemed to gather around him naturally, as if people looked for him without meaning to.

One of the boys said something that made the others burst into laughter.

Luka lowered his head with a quiet smile, the kind that appeared before he could stop it.

And Isabella-

caught herself watching a second longer than necessary.

When he smiled, he looked younger. More like a 14-year-old despite the height. The morning light caught in his slightly longer blond hair, turning it almost honey-gold at the edges, and for a fleeting second the noisy corridor seemed to blur around him.

To her own surprise, Isabella felt herself smiling too. It was nothing, really. Just a smile from a boy she barely knew.

A few seconds later, he disappeared around the corner, and the corridor sound swallowed her up again.

Yet that brief smile stayed with her for the rest of the day, surfacing at odd moments between classes, lingering like the last line of a song she couldn’t quite forget.

January, 2014

By the time the second term began, everyone knew Luka Dončić’s name.

The strange part was how quickly it had happened.

The previous year, almost no one at school cared about Real Madrid basketball. Some didn't even know the prestigious club had a basketball branch. Football was everything. Football achievements were announced during assemblies, football prospects were whispered about by teachers, and football boys walked through the corridors with the easy confidence of minor celebrities like they owned the building.

Basketball existed somewhere in the background, noticed only by the students who already loved it and played.

Then Luka happened.

And suddenly the notice boards began filling with basketball headlines.

TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONS

MVP — LUKA DONČIĆ

RISING STAR AWARD

CONGRATULATIONS TO LUKA DONČIĆ AND THE REAL MADRID BASKETBALL TEAM

Again. And again. And again...

Most students looked at Luka and saw a headline: the prodigy, the rising star, the famous basketball player.

Isabella saw something completely different.

A boy who had left his home at the age of 13, arrived in a new country, and had to learn everything from the beginning; the language, the culture, the people, the unspoken rules of belonging and acceptance. Seeing him surrounded by friends made her unexpectedly happy, as though some small part of the loneliness she had glimpsed in him before had finally eased.

At that point, that was all the extent of her thinking about him.

A stranger she kept hearing about.

A boy with a memorable smile.

A name that seemed to appear everywhere. Nothing more.

She had more immediate problems; namely, the fact that she had completely forgotten to register for her second-semester elective. Between Christmas celebrations, family visits, and New Year’s trips, the deadline had slipped past her unnoticed.

The only class with remaining seats was Spanish.

Spanish.

Her own language.

She stared at the form for a full minute before signing it with the resignation of someone accepting a ridiculous fate.

I’ll ace this without opening a notebook, she thought.

That confidence lasted until she read the timetable.

The class was held after school, scheduled specifically so it could be taken jointly with students from the sports academy. Her friends laughed mercilessly when they found out.

“You forgot the sign-up? Bella, that is so unlike you.”

“Have fun spending two hours learning how to say hola.”

"Ha ha, very funny. Let's see if you're still laughing when I come back dating some footballer from Estonia that I met in Spanish class and fell madly in love with," Isabella shot back sarcastically, earning an even louder round of laughter from her friends.

On Tuesday afternoon, she found herself dragging her feet down the nearly empty hallway, wondering how she was supposed to survive two hours of material she already knew, without a single friend in the room.

She pushed open the classroom door.

A handful of students were already there, all wearing Real Madrid training kits instead of the school uniform.

Great, she thought, forcing a polite smile as she slipped into a seat at the back. She was the only one dressed in the formal navy-and-cream uniform, which made her feel strangely out of place.

It’s just for the credit, Bella. Two hours. You’ll survive.

The teacher arrived exactly as the clock struck 3:00 p.m.

As expected, the exercises were painfully easy. Isabella finished the worksheet long before anyone else and turned her attention to the window. Beyond the glass, the tennis courts glowed in the pale winter sunlight. She began absentmindedly counting the tennis balls scattered along the baseline, letting the numbers blur together.

Then the back door opened.

The sound was enough to make several students look up.

A tall blond boy stepped through the doorway, ducking slightly under the frame. A few strands of tousled hair fell across his forehead as he ran a hand through it, slightly out of breath.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said in a quiet voice, turning to the teacher, his accent wrapping around the Spanish words.

Isabella’s attention snapped into focus.

Her eyes widened with recognition.

The basketball boy?

As if sensing it, Luka turned his head.

And for the second time, his grey-blue eyes found hers.

Drixton Hall - Chapter 10

First Words

In the year 2013, she was fourteen.

The age of rebellion and discovery. The age when childhood began slipping quietly into the background, making room for something new. The age of whispered crushes, secret diary entries, and endless conversations about boys that somehow became the center of every lunch break.

Isabella listened to all of it with mild amusement.

She was naturally friendly, the kind of person who could strike up a conversation with almost anyone and somehow leave them smiling afterward. She knew half the school by name, chatted comfortably with teachers, and had a habit of collecting friends wherever she went.

People gravitated toward her.

Boys especially. Not because she encouraged them. If anything, Isabella had mastered the art of keeping them exactly where she wanted them.

She laughed at their jokes, teased them mercilessly, and sat beside them in class without a second thought. Somehow she always ended up in that comfortable middle ground, one of the boys when it suited her, but never quite one of them.

Being a true Leo, she moved through life with effortless confidence. Fiercely independent, stubborn when necessary, and fiercely protective of her freedom.

Romance wasn't high on her list of priorities. She was content with her social life as it was.

It was a warm spring afternoon in the middle of March, after school, when Isabella found herself approaching the student notice board near the arts wing, clutching a flyer for an upcoming charity event her friend group was organizing.

As she approached, she overheard a cluster of girls walking away from the board.

They were giggling with that fresh enthusiasm of teenagers.

One sighed dramatically as she passed by.

"He's so cute."

Another immediately agreed.

"I wonder if he has a girlfriend."

Curious, Isabella stepped closer.

What on earth could be posted on a notice board to cause that reaction?

Near the center hung a large school announcement.

CONGRATULATIONSREAL MADRID U-16 TEAMWINNERS OF THE MINI COPA CHAMPIONSHIP!

MVP: LUKA DONČIĆ (Student at SEK El-Castillo, 2º C)

Below the announcement was a photograph of a boy wearing a Real Madrid basketball jersey, white and gold, smiling broadly as he held a trophy.

Oh. I know him.

She recognized him immediately.

The tall, skinny guy from the cafeteria. She read the name again.

Luka. With a K.

A small smile tugged at her lips. He does look like a Luka.

Apparently, the tall Slovenian kid wasn't just good at basketball.

He was good enough to play with older boys. Good enough to be MVP.

Was he the one those girls were talking about?

There weren't any other individual photos on the board, only a team picture underneath.

She glanced at his photo again.

Messy blond hair. Blue-grey eyes. Tall enough to pass for sixteen.

Yeah. He was definitely cute.

Still, this wasn't the time to stand around appreciating handsome basketball players on notice boards.

She had a flyer to hang. Unfortunately, every available spot was already occupied.

Only the very top section remained empty. For obvious reasons. Which was irritating because Isabella couldn't reach it.

She stretched onto her toes, attempting to pin the flyer in place.

Nothing.

She tried again. Still nothing.

Then, after a moment of consideration, she hooked the pin through the paper, took a running hop, and slapped it against the board while silently praying for divine intervention.

The flyer immediately slid sideways and fluttered to the floor.

"Ugh. For the love of—"

She muttered a curse under her breath in Spanish as she bent down to retrieve it.

Behind her, someone snickered.

Isabella spun around, fast.

And there he was. The basketball player from the photograph.

Luka with a K.

He stood a few steps away, basketball tucked under one arm. She noticed that his blazer was gone. His red-and-silver-striped tie hung loose around his neck, his white shirt was untucked, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The backpack strap crossed his chest.

He froze, caught.

“…Sorry,” he said, though his eyes were still laughing.

She narrowed hers. “Were you laughing at me?”

“A little bit.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Well, zip it.”

His mouth twitched, fighting a smile. He glanced at the crumpled flyer in her hands.

“Need help?”

His Spanish was understandable, but the Slovenian accent curled around the edges, making the words sound softer than they should.

Isabella looked him up and down. He was indeed tall. The kind of height that made the rest of him seem like it was still catching up.

“Yeah, why not?” She handed him the flyer. “Let’s put that height to good use for charity.”

That earned her a real chuckle, warm, quick, and surprisingly deep. The same smile from the photograph, only brighter in person. It was the kind of smile that made you want to smile back without thinking. And Isabella did.

Luka stepped closer and took the flyer from her hands. She didn’t move away. He reached up and pinned the flyer perfectly at the top of the board, barely needing to extend his arm.

Up close, she noticed a few more new details: the faint beginnings of a sharp jawline, the messy way his blond hair fell across his forehead, the clean scent of laundry detergent, and something fresh like mint or cool air.

Without thinking, she blurted out, “How tall are you?”

Luka looked down at her, still fixing the flyer on the board with one hand, clearly amused.

“Six-two.”

Her jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous.”

He shrugged, still smiling, and started spinning the basketball on one finger with casual arrogance.

“Not for basketball,” he said simply.

Oh, he’s smooth, Isabella thought, folding her arms. He wasn’t a big talker, probably still working on the language, but he didn’t need many words. The confidence was loud enough.

He caught the ball mid-spin, gave her a small nod, and started walking down the corridor.

“Chao,” he called over his shoulder.

“Hey!” Isabella shouted after him. “Thanks!”

Luka lifted one hand without turning around, the basketball now bouncing lightly at his side as he disappeared around the corner.

Only then did it hit her.

She knew exactly who he was, thanks to half the school announcements, but he never asked for her name.

Isabella stared down the empty hallway for a second, a tiny, annoyed smile tugging at her lips. The kind of smile that appeared whenever something didn’t quite go her way.

At fourteen, she turned on her heels and walked off in the opposite direction, ponytail swinging behind her. She had no idea that the tall, quietly confident Slovenian boy with the contagious smile would soon get to know far more than just her name. He would know her, perhaps even better than she knew herself...

First Meeting

Isabella found her car in the parking lot below, handed the ticket to the attendant without looking up, and sat in the driver's seat for a moment before starting the engine.

She needed a moment to process what had happened. 

She started the car.

The light on the drive back to the office was long and amber, the kind that turned even ordinary buildings into something worth photographing, falling across stone facades and the tops of orange trees and the faces of people sitting outside cafés, squinting pleasantly into the afternoon.

Isabella drove, and her mind drifted into the distant past, the very first memory she had of Luka Doncic. Not the global superstar. When he was just a skinny, tall 13-year-old boy that didnt know a single word of Spanish.

It was an ordinary day in the middle of the semester at SEK-El Castillo private school during mid November 2012. The first week after the autumn half-term. 

Isabella had been sitting with Sofía and Camila, he two best friends at their usual table in the cafeteria, the one near the tall windows on the east side that got the best light in the morning, which Sofía claimed was for the vitamin D and everyone understood it was for the aesthetic.

They were in their usual chatter, but Isabella had looked up from her lunch, seen a boy she didn't recognize standing at the beginning of the food line.

Her first thought, uncharitably, was: he's too tall.

Her second thought, immediately after: why is he too skinny?

She concluded he must not be much older than her, considering his face still looked very young despite his height. His shoulders were narrow. His feet too big. He carried his tray with the careful attention of someone navigating in an unfamiliar space, which was, as she would later learn, almost literally true. 

For some reason, Isabella kept staring at the new kid. Maybe it’s because he stood out from the rest.

He didn’t scan the cafeteria the way new students usually did, that nervous, searching look for a safe place to sit. Instead, he glanced at the food options, picked up a tray, found an empty spot at a table, and started eating without a glance at anyone else.

“Who is that?” Sofía asked, not bothering to lower her voice.

Isabella tore her eyes away from the boy immediately, pretending she hadn’t been staring.

Camila leaned forward. “Oh, him? I heard he’s a new basketball signee for the Real Madrid Academy programme.” Of course, she would know her older brother was in the sports track. 

Real Madrid had been sending its prospects to SEK-El Castillo for years. The school had seen dozens come and go.

“Basketball?” Sofía scoffed. “I didn’t even know they signed those.” She laughed, but it was true.

For all Real Madrid’s prestige, its basketball team had been struggling for years. Isabella couldn’t remember a single notable achievement during her time at the school. Football had always been king.

Camila dropped her voice almost to a whisper. “But get this- he’s not from here. Like, not even from Spain. I’ve never heard of them bringing in a kid from another country before.”

“Really?” Sofía glanced back at him. “He must be a lot better than our own guys then.”

“He’s definitely a lot taller than our guys,” Isabella added, earning a burst of giggles from the table.

The conversation quickly drifted on to other things. By thirteen, Isabella had learned not to pay too much attention.

The sponsored athletes were treated like a different breed at SEK-El Castillo. They existed in the same building, wore the same uniform, but everyone understood the unspoken divide. The truly rich kids, like Isabella, were there because of their families’ power and influence. The sponsored ones were there because the club needed them. The two groups rarely mixed. 

At thirteen, Isabella had already absorbed this invisible hierarchy. And for better or for worse, she was already somehow at the top tier of it. She had grown up with privilege so naturally that she carried it without ego, an effortless high-class air that made people treat her differently even when she was just laughing with her friends. 

She loved her friends deeply and considered herself down-to-earth, yet somehow the world always placed her on a pedestal. So after that brief glimpse of the tall blond boy eating alone, she turned back to her friends and forgot about him almost immediately.

Life at thirteen was still simple, and she was happy to keep it that way.

A sharp car horn snapped her back to the present. Isabella blinked hard, gripping the steering wheel.

Ugh, go away YOU, she thought, shoving the memory of young Luka out of her head. Not now.

She turned the corner toward her office, a sleek skyscraper rising in the heart of Madrid. On the 47th floor, she stepped out of the elevator, bag in hand, silently ordering herself to focus. The rest of the day blurred by in a storm of client calls and back-to-back meetings. She was deep in the middle of editing a contract when her business phone lit up with a new message.

“Izzy?”

Isabella stared at the screen. She knew instantly it was Luka. Everybody else called her “Bella” when Luka insisted on calling her otherwise.

She set the phone down, then picked it up again a second later. 

Client or old friend?

She wasn’t even sure she could call him a friend after all these years. Yet here he was, acting as if nothing had happened.

We’re adults now, she reminded herself, exhaling through her nose. 

Still, her fingers hovered before she typed the most neutral reply she could manage.

“Yes. Is this your personal number, Luka?”

His response came almost immediately, startling her enough that she nearly tossed the phone aside.

“Yes. Save it. Just wanted to check if this number was fake 😉" 

Isabella frowned at the screen and made a face. 

What is he, fourteen?

The thought made her chuckle despite herself. She leaned back in her chair and looked out through the floor-to-ceiling glass. The Madrid sky was shifting into deep golds and soft pinks as the sun began to set for a dangerously romantic evening.

Her mind, traitorous as always, drifted back to 2013. The year she had finally spoken to the tall blond boy she had only glimpsed eating alone in the cafeteria.

Fourteen, huh…

The Cancellation

Madrid in May smelled like orange blossoms, expensive perfume, and people pretending they weren’t looking at celebrities.

Isabella Rayes moved through the lobby of the hotel with the kind of confidence that came from years of knowing exactly where she belonged. Cream blazer. Gold earrings. Dark sunglasses pushed into glossy chestnut hair pulled back in a low knot. Phone in one hand, espresso in the other.

Elegant without trying.

Which, frankly, irritated some people. But she never gave a damn.

At twenty-seven, Isabella had mastered the art of making impossible things happen for obscenely wealthy clients. Last-minute yachts in Capri. Private flamenco performances in Seville. Closing entire museums for anniversary dinners because someone’s billionaire husband suddenly decided, “I want that extraordinary feeling.”

Luxury concierge work wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. It was organized warfare with prettier lighting and sleepless nights.

And right now, she was about to lose a battle. And she never liked to lose.

“Darling, the penthouse reservation was confirmed two weeks ago,” Isabella said calmly in Spanish, though the muscle in her jaw had begun to twitch. “My client specifically requested this suite because of the terrace access.”

Across from her, the hotel manager looked deeply stressed. The poor man had the expression of someone who hadn’t slept since Tuesday.

“Yes, señora Rayes, and we sincerely apologize-”

“You cancelled it 8 hours before arrival. That is not how we’ve done things before.”

“There were… special circumstances.”

“There always are. But we always, and I repeat always, discuss before complete cancellations now aren’t we?”

“Bella-”

“No, Javier, don’t ‘Bella’ me. My client is flying from Monaco in three hours, and I have absolutely nowhere for them to stay?” 

She pressed even though she already had a plan B and a C in place if this thing didn’t go well. But she wants the best option first.

The manager lowered his voice.

“We received a priority VIP request. That well, we could not refuse.”

Ah. There it was.

Isabella crossed her arms. “Royal family?”

“No.”

“Politician?”

“No.”

A pause then Javier continued.

“Well… a Basketball Player”

Bella blinked. “Madrid Plaza cancelled my reservation for someone who doesn’t even play football?” And the sarcasm was hard to ignore.

The manager hesitated.

Isabella almost laughed. “Who on earth is important enough to shut down an entire hotel floor for_” She stopped and made finger quotes “basketball”?”

Javier hesitated whether it’s ok to reveal the VIP.

“It’s Luka Dončić.”

Her smile halted in the moment. The name hit her like a song she hadn’t heard in years. It's not that she hasn't heard it, it's the fact that he was mentioned in the same context as hers.

Silence. Not outside. Outside the hotel, the city still moved loudly, cars, conversations, tourists.

But inside Bella’s head, something paused. A flash of a smiling teenage boy, too tall for his age, walking towards her with a basketball tucked underneath his arm, crossed her mind. 

“Oh,” she said softly before she could stop herself. 

Javier shrugged. Madrid treated Luka Dončić at the same level as they worship footballers, so there’s no surprise there. 

“Please understand the circumstances.”

“Well,” she said professionally, smoothing herself back into the present, “if the penthouse is unavailable, I’ll need another property with equivalent privacy, staff flexibility, and secured underground access.”

Javier visibly relaxed now that she wasn’t threatening homicide.

“I may have a solution.”

“Good. Because if my client ends up in the Four Seasons, she’ll complain about the marble for six months.” She turns around and leaned against the front desk, taking a sip of her espresso. “And you will lose my contracts.”

That earned a reluctant laugh from him.

Isabella pulled out her phone, already mentally reorganizing transportation schedules, floral deliveries, and chef arrangements, when the atmosphere in the lobby suddenly shifted.

Someone near the entrance whispered, “He’s here.”

The front desk staff straightened almost imperceptibly. Two suited men she hadn't noticed before moved toward the entrance with practiced efficiency. Through the arched windows that faced the street, she could see the dark shape of a large vehicle pulling up. Then another.

She saw a bunch of people huddled in front of the entrance, and saw a couple of security keeping them at bay when a tall guy got out of the large black vehicle.

Luka Dončić. Ten years later. Still absurdly tall.

That was Bella’s first thought. She squinted but couldn’t see a lot, except he was wearing a grey hoodie and signing autographs for fans. Her expression did not change.

That was the thing about Isabella Reyes. Her expression almost never changed when it mattered. It was something she'd been born with and then spent years refining into a very deliberate skill.

“Senore Rayes, please this way.”

He ushered her toward the manager’s office while quietly instructing the receptionist to keep the VIP attended to.

Isabella turned away before Luka could possibly look up.

He wouldn’t even remember me now anyways. They are pretty much stranges now. He's a celebrity. Too much life happened in between. 

How fitting, she thought dryly as she walked away.

After ten years, Luka Dončić still managed to ruin her plans.

After finalizing the contract and the new arrangement with Javier, Bella stepped out of the office, calculating what remained of the rest of her day. 

The corridor that led to the hotel's private parking level was one of those transitional spaces that luxury hotels preferred guests not to linger in, functional rather than beautiful, lit in a warmer tone than the lobby but stripped of its theatre. Stone gave way to sealed concrete. The sound changed. Isabella's heels found a different register. 

She was already composing the email to her client in her head, a more intimate venue, exclusive garden access, we felt it better suited the occasion_ when she heard it.

"Izzi?"

She stopped.

Not because she was startled, exactly. More because the word landed somewhere so specifically internal that her body responded before her mind caught up- the way a familiar song might find you in a supermarket and briefly make you someone slightly younger than you were a moment ago.

Izzi.

Only he called her that name.

Slowly, Isabella turned around.

And there he was.

He was standing at the entrance to the corridor, still in the same grey hoodie she'd seen from across the lobby. Up close, the scale of him was different. He'd filled out considerably from the last version of him she held in her memory. The height was the same, still that slightly-too-tall-for-the-room quality, but the leanness she remembered from school had been replaced with something more settled. He looked like someone who had grown completely into himself.

Security hovered nearby but kept their distance.

Luka stared at her openly for a second. The expression on his face was, uncertain. Almost boyish. Like he wasn't entirely sure he'd gotten the right person and was quietly hoping he had.

She couldn’t help but smile at that. “Hi, Luka” 

His eyebrows shot up.

“No way.” He laughed softly under his breath.

And there it was. That smile.

Dios mío. Of course the smile survived.

She walked a little closer. Not all the way. Never all the way. Enough for him to meet her halfway if he wanted to. Which he did.

“I thought I got the wrong person” He said with that signature smirk of his. Still irritatingly charming.

He stepped forward and hugged her briefly. Polite. Friendly and most importantly, safe.

“Never thought you’d recognize me now,” Bella said in her friendly voice.

His voice was deeper now. Rougher around the edges.

Still familiar.

“C’mon you look the same” 

She deadpanned immediately, “Wow. Thanks. I feel incredibly confident knowing I apparently still look like a teenager at twenty-seven.” 

Ah, stop talking, Isabella thought immediately. This was exactly why she found him dangerous at fifteen too. Most people got her polished version. The composed one. The elegant one. Luka somehow always dragged her actual thoughts out into the open before she could stop them.

He laughed.

God. This was dangerous already.

Because it felt easy immediately. No awkwardness. No weird celebrity distance. Just… familiar. Like slipping into an old conversation, they accidentally paused for ten years.

Luka shook his head once, still smiling slightly.

“I seriously can’t believe it’s you.”

She grinned.

Then tilted her head, studying him properly now.

“You look different, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, you have a beard now.”

Luka instinctively touched his jaw. “That’s the difference?”

“Well, as I remember, you had a hard time growing a beard back then,” She said with a shrug. 

Luka narrowed his eyes. “What bullshit is that? You just left before I hit puberty.”

Before she could stop, a very unladylike snort escaped. “Like you weren’t 6’2 at the age of 13 already? Please…”

They both laughed at that. It was easy… It’s the same as 10-12 years ago. 

Up close, she could see traces of the boy she remembered beneath everything else. Beneath the fame. The NBA. The exhaustion around his eyes that came from years of cameras and pressure and travel.

Same eyes though. Still annoyingly expressive.

A hotel staff member approached carefully. “Señor Dončić, the medical team is waiting upstairs.”

Luka nodded without looking away from her.

“Right.”

The moment shifted slightly as the reality hit.

Isabella reached into her bag and pulled out a business card.

“If you need anything while hiding mysteriously in Madrid,” she said lightly, handing it over, “my company handles impossible requests.”

Luka glanced down at the card.

Isabella Rayes Senior Experience Consierge

A grin tugged at his mouth, and he whistled.

“That sounds expensive.”

“Yes, and?” she replied smoothly. “I'm sure you can afford it.” 

“I’m not rich.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right… says the guy who ruined my original VIP client reservation with zero influence and no money, I bet.” Then she reached for the card dramatically. “Fine. Give it back then. I’ll save it for an actual rich client.” 

But Luka flipped it away before she could grab it and slipped it into his pocket.

“Well,” he said casually, “you never know.”

Dangerous sentence. Very dangerous sentence.

“You should go,” she said softly. “They’re waiting.”

Their eyes held for one brief second longer than necessary.

“And…” Isabella cleared her throat lightly. “Good luck with your recovery.”

Something gentler crossed his expression then.

“Thanks, Izzy.”

There it was again.

That stupid nickname. That nickname he came up with out of nowhere on a randome Tuesday afternoon.

She couldn’t help but smile.

“I’ll check with you before cancelling reservations next time,” he called after her.

She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Don’t make promises.”

Because promises made too quickly had a nasty habit of turning into hope. And Isabella knew better than anyone how dangerous hope could be.

Luka Doncic x Female OC (High School to Present)

Prologue

There is a theory about soulmates.

Not the kind scrawled in cheap romance novels or whispered over half-finished glasses of wine, but an older theory. Sadder, somehow.

It says you meet the same soul three times in your life.

The first time, they are nothing more than a passing shadow, a stranger woven into the background of your surroundings. You glance at them once across a noisy room and think nothing of it, never knowing that years later, their name will live inside your chest like a second heartbeat.

The second time, the spark catches.

But timing is wrong.

Maybe you were too young. Too afraid. Too hungry for something else. Life pulls harder than love does, and no matter how desperately your souls lean toward one another, the world drags you apart before anything real can take root. You become an almost... the kind that leaves a specific, unnamed ache. Not quite a wound. You just learn to live with it.

Then comes the third meeting.

When you've been through life. When grief has carved wisdom into your bones. When love no longer feels like something to outrun. When you no longer seek to satisfy your ego.

Just recognition.

Because some souls are destined to find each other more than once. Not to test each other,

...but to finally meet in the middle.

____________________________________________________________

The first time Isabella Rayes saw him, she wasn't paying attention.

She was thirteen, mid-laugh, mid-conversation, surrounded by the particular chaos that followed her everywhere. He passed through the background of it, a ridiculously tall, painfully lanky boy weaving between cafeteria tables with the gracelessness of someone who hadn't grown into his own limbs yet. All elbows and long strides and messy hair.

Another sports prospect probably, she thought, and returned to her conversation.

A passing face. Background shadow.

—

The second time round, she got to know him.

She was fifteen, walking into her senior Spanish class on a Tuesday afternoon, and she stopped.

He was sitting across the room. The same boy, only older, and somehow even taller, and the awkwardness had begun settling into something else entirely. Time had been working on him quietly.

Handsome, she noted, and sat down.

Every Tuesday for one hour, they shared that classroom. One hour became inside jokes murmured beneath their breath, glances held a beat too long, the kind that meant nothing and everything when you were fifteen.

"I'm going to be an NBA player," he told her one afternoon, with that crooked, unhurried grin.

Isabella raised an eyebrow. "And I'm going to travel every city worth knowing and learn every language worth speaking."

She believed him. Not blindly, she somehow knew by the way he said it. With an absolute confidence.

He was never meant to stay. That was simply what he was, for her. He was a foreigner to begin with. A kid came to Spain from Slovenia. He's always going to leave.

And he did. At the age of 16, they went their separate ways. He went on to become a professional basketball player for Real Madrid, and she went to London for higher studies.

Their story ended the way the best almost-stories do, quietly, without ceremony. No labels. No definitions. Just two people suspended in the tension of almost. Almost feelings. Almost together. Almost something that mattered.

Never nothing. Never something.

He left to become what he always said he would. She left to collect cities and languages and versions of herself she hadn't yet met.

And life happened after that, indifferent, relentless, occasionally magnificent. Beautiful things. Terrible things. Love. Heartbreak. Loss. The slow, quiet architecture of becoming a person.

Ten years turned like pages in a book she hadn't meant to finish so quickly.

—

At twenty-seven, she's now a high-end luxury concierge. Fitting for her outgoing and organized personality. Isabella was at Madrid Plaza Hotel, busy thinking about her high-end client, doing what she always did, three things at once, and making it look effortless.

Then she heard it.

A voice. A voice she would always recognize. Deeper than she remembered.

"Izzy?"

But that name. Only he calls her by it... She looked up.

She did not find the lanky boy from the cafeteria. Nor the teenager whose crooked grin once cut straight through every wall she built. The man standing in front of her was... a global superstar, the franchise player of the NBA's most storied club, six-foot-seven and built like someone who had spent a decade becoming exactly what he said he would.

Older. Broader. Even a beard now, jaw sharper beneath it. The dirty blonde hair has turned to a darker brown shade now.

The world had written itself all over him.

And yet... when his steel blue eyes found hers, something deep and long-dormant turned over inside her chest.

That same impossible feeling. That same quiet electricity, still there, after everything. After ten years of silence and cities and whole different other lives.

Her soul recognised his before her mind could form a single coherent thought.

Luka.

And here she was. Meeting him for the third time…

Black Knight - Luka X AR

Summary

In which Luka accidentally becomes Austin's Black Knight...

Lights Out - Luka X AR

Summary

Lakers lost their first clutch game of the season to the Bucks. Luka played terribly and was frustrated. Austin just stayed back after the game to get some shots up, like he always does before heading home. What he didn't expect was to run into a certain Slovenian brooding by himself.

And to make it worse, the lights go out.

Not Alone - Luka x AR

Summary

The MRI result stopped Austin Reaves’ world in its tracks. At his lowest point, Luka found him and stayed, pulling him back from the edge when everything felt like it was falling apart.

To my biggest fan To my #1 fan

Carlos is that logical and intellectual guy, who needs order and routine to function better. As he said himself, he won't try new risky things but enjoy routine stuff. He hates things he cannot logically understand (like magic tricks). Man's favourite app is the weather app for gods sake.

Meanwhile, Charles is that carefree and unpredictable guy, who needs constant changes in life (side quests) and doesn't hesitate to try new things on a whim. He's passionate and poetic and all things romantic.

It's so funny when Carlos was asked about the van trip, he said those are the moments they will rememer when they get old, like that's what he thought by himself. Only for Charles to come out and say Carlos was frustrated, and HE said to Carlos that it's the little adventures like this that they'll treasure for life. It's like Carlos truly believed that when Charles said it and went along with it.

Like the emphasis that Charles always put on them two talking after getting out of the car, looking each other in the eyes because they know each other so well so they can see the situation from the other’s pov, the ability to apologise when they’ve done something wrong and then everything was fine. I feel like that team would implode without such competent, professional and good people as drivers that were able to race each other fiercely without crashing (Monza 2023), put the team first (Singapore 2023), be happy about each other’s success, while being extremely competitive and navigate their relationship in the team on their own. I don’t think this gets praised enough. Like holy shit are Ferrari bad at communication and team management that this is nothing short of a miracle.

I hate to talk about FerRArI f*ckass team communication handling. If they won anything, it's because their drivers ignored the strategy and went on their own lol. You probably already know how latest one panned out with the swap in Baku. As I see Charles is a guy who would understand things from another person's perspective if explained correctly. And he always said that he was glad to have teammates who would honestly discuss stuff that happens during races and move on. Like Max, charles does not care about anyone else when on-track. On the other hand Carlos is sensitive and could get hurt and personal and would probably judge your whole entire personality based on that one thing. SO it's essential thet they make up right after. Obviously they know how Ferrari fck up the communications and trigger misunderstandings. imo it's purely to maintain their off-track relationship.