If you could save someone's life, would you? Anyone's? Ali's older brother has a swastika tattooed on his knuckles, a prison ID number for nearly beating an immigrant to death, and spent his teenage years ruthlessly persecuting Ali for being gay. Blood may be thicker than water, but Ali has spent most of his life desperate to prove he is nothing like Tony. A committed vegetarian, charity-supporter, and blood donor, Ali would do anything for anyone. Ali may share parentage with Tony, but he’s determined not to share anything else if he can help it. So when Tony contracts leukaemia, and Ali is the only match for the urgently-needed bone marrow transplant, Ali is caught between two equally awful choices: to refuse and condemn a man to death, or to donate. And in donating, save the life of the man who nearly murdered Ali's Iraqi boyfriend?

Thicker Than Bone

“Your phone rings, it’s your mum’s ringtone, I hear you having a right row with her, and then you come downstairs and say everything’s fine and you’re hungry?”


“Pull the other one, babe,” Yazid murmured.


Ali exhaled heavily, and squirmed closer. That was the worst part—in his dreams, it was like it actually happening all over again, and he didn’t know that Yazid would be fine. In his dreams, he didn’t know that Yazid hadn’t been killed then and there on the old flat floor. He hooked his leg around Yazid’s ankle, twisting them together as tightly as possible, and kissed his collarbone.


Yazid hummed, blunt nails scratching gently at the base of Ali’s scalp in a soothing sort of motion. “Guessed that, too.”


They didn’t talk about Tony. Or rather, Ali didn’t, and Yazid left the subject well enough alone.


“Ali, this is like pulling teeth, c’mon,” Yazid moaned, and Ali pinched him. “Ow!”


Chapter 6