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The hard part isn’t leaving. That part is simple. Not because it doesn’t hurt. It does. It hurts in quiet ways that you never expected. It’s the kind of hurt you notice when you reach for your phone out of instinct to say something stupid you know would make someone laugh before remembering that you left them behind. So, the hard part isn’t leaving, not really. The hard part is living with what you had to sacrifice and not regretting it. Regret, as it turns out, exists mostly in muscle memory. It’s in the way he feels an ache when going through his usual rituals before practice which are now haunted by the silence of a missing person. It’s when Will catches himself looking for a familiar number on the ice before his brain realizes what he’s doing. He just needs time to adjust. It doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t regret leaving.
What nobody tells you is that every road you take houses the ghosts of the ones you didn't. He thinks back to the promise he broke. Wonders if Leno thinks about that day the way he does. Back then he had been convinced the future was something you could promise to another person.
San Jose is different from Boston. Even the ice feels different beneath his skates, though he knows that's just sentiment making him feel that way. Mack laughs from somewhere behind him, he turns to look, smiling, before he even realizes he’s doing it. That should scare him more than it does. With Leno, everything always felt like standing too close to the edge of something they could never acknowledge.
People talk about chemistry like it's something that appears out of nowhere. Like two players step onto the ice and suddenly they just connect. Will knows better. Chemistry is repetition. It's years of taking the same bus rides. It's recognizing the sound of their skates before you look up. Knowing exactly when to pass because you’ve done it before.
He used to have that with Leno. Commentators liked to call it chemistry, but really it was just practice. Thousands of moments stacked on top of one another until passing to Leno felt less like making a decision and more like continuing a conversation. It had taken years to build. But only one decision to lose it all.
Then there was Mack. All it took was one summer. One development camp. They were transformed from rivals meant to hate each other to playing like they’d been doing it for years. The comparisons started almost immediately. Kane and Toews. Crosby and Malkin.The future of the San Jose Sharks.
With Mack, every good play felt like the beginning of something he hadn't known was possible. With Leno, it had felt like returning home. Maybe that was the difference. Home isn’t always where you’re supposed to stay. Sometimes, home is the place that teaches you how to leave. For Will, leaving meant he chose the person he wanted to become over the person he had been. And there are some betrayals that no amount of success resolve the guilt of.
Christianity teaches you sacrifice but nobody tells you what to do when you’re the one holding the knife. The price of that ghost. That love with nowhere else to go.