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

Plus it kept Ali’s mind off the possibility of…being a match.


He found a toastie and a coffee in the station cafe, and curled his fingers around the warm paper bag as he returned to Yazid, pressing it into his hands and kissing the man’s cheek.


“Get that down you,” Ali said quietly. “It doesn’t matter if we’re a bit late getting up to the hospital. And we’ll get a taxi if you’re still feeling shattered.”


“Is this you fussing, or you not wanting to go?” Yazid asked around a yawn.


“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Ali admitted, and swallowed. He wanted to not be a match, and if he couldn’t just force the tests to be negative, then he could avoid them. Stupid, but there it was.


“I know,” he murmured, watching Yazid decimate the toastie. “I know I need to. I just…is it mental that I would donate for a total stranger, but not my own brother?”


“In theory, yeah, but total strangers are easier to feel a moral obligation towards than your brother.”


Chapter 24