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

“Oh.” Ali sighed. He twisted his head and Yazid felt a kiss being dropped on his chest. “No. He’s weird like that, he always lost his temper at home and he’d scream and shout and smash stuff up, but he never actually beat me or Jo up. He used to hit other kids at school all the time, and when we were little he once set fire to all of Jo’s dolls because she stole his dessert, but he wasn’t violent to us. He has this…really weird idea of family. Like…”


“Like blaming other people for you being gay?”


Yazid wrapped both arms around Ali’s shoulders and squeezed.


“I don’t want him anywhere near you,” Ali whispered.


“Well, now I know what he looks like,” Yazid said.


“If you…if you—you know, if Tony’s too much, then…I wouldn’t blame you.”


Chapter 23