She moves her hands over his shoulders, crosses them around his neck, and holds him loosely as he speaks.
"I've heard that story before. Different names, same tragedy. It makes me sad, and baby I'm so sorry it happened to you. I've seen people with my own eyes do that and not come out alive, or at least... never recover. It's scary. I know. I've seen people die for love. I don't want that to be us. If I ever had to let you go, REALLY let you go like we'd never be friends again, I'd make you hate me first, so it wouldn't be so hard. I don't know..."
She strokes his forehead and touches his brows and his cheeks.
"I'll keep you safe. Even if you don't need it. That's what I do." She smiles. "I've never been in love. I've always known it's never necessarily returned. I grew up without a father. My mother was never shy about admitting that my father didn't know about me, and was not in love with her. So many kids on the road were the same way. So many my age, the little ones, pre-teens, kids I grew up with and babysat -- they rarely had two married parents. They had one, or three, or a hundred, and a lot of the teens who joined up with us were runaways who'd ended up in the gypsy life because of a broken heart. Baby... I don't want that for either of us."