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

Underneath the anger, a shard of very real pain twisted in Ali’s heart. And yet…and yet the anger was still fighting to get loose of the sudden winter, and he swallowed before jutting out his chin. “Am I permitted to go?”


“Just get the fuck out, Ali—before I do something I’ll regret and throw you out,” Yazid hissed, his eyes dark pits of something utterly unreadable. Without another word, he snatched up the hand towel on the side and stalked out of the kitchen, his long stride creaking on the stairs as he disappeared.


Ali exhaled, and snatched his jacket off the chair where he’d dropped it. He needed—air, space, time—to get out. Just…just to get out and cool off. Calm down. Try and—


He could barely remember what the fight had really been about, but the expression on Yazid’s face had been unsettling and cold, and…and Yazid was a lot of things, but not cold.


Chapter 43