It was on instinct alone that she pulled her arms from his grasp, her injured hand nearly slamming into the mantle as she did so. Physical touch was a tether, a means of ensaring so that she couldn't try to flee again. However, his earnest reaction softed her enough to not grab the discarded floo powder and break for it. He might've been willing to give up everything for love, but maybe he would understand.

(Unlikely, but he seemed willing to try at least.)

Jo looked at him for only a brief second before looking back towards the blank wall. God damn him for taking them down, for being so ready and accepting of change. For wanting to change. Jo was so angry because she was so bloody envious of him she could scream. How did he manage to stiffle his impulses, to suffer through the ridiculousness of society without feeling as though he were impersonating someone else? Jo had always thought them to be so similar, like he was one of the only souls on this continent who might understand her as herself, and now he felt as foreign as the rest of the world.

"I love him." Jo explained uselessly. "And I mean that. I would move mountains for him and do anything he needed. But ..." This was where she was going to lose Alfred, because if she loved him as she claimed to then there wouldn't be a but. She would just be happy to be Jupiter Binns and none of the rest would matter. The rest did matter, though, and she might as well be friendless, too. "But I don't want to. I'm not ready to."