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

Ali’s jaw dropped. He opened his mouth, ready to give Tony a fucking furious piece of his mind—and shut it again when Yazid shook his head sharply.


“You fucking tell him from me, you fucking tell him,” Tony rasped, “that I know what you’re up to. You’re telling him not to, telling him—”


“Tony, even if I were to tell Ali not to donate bone marrow to you, it wouldn’t do a fucking thing,” Yazid said casually. “Ali doesn’t do as I tell him. I don’t even bother to try. I don’t know how you treat your boyfriends—”


A surprised smile flashed across Ali’s face, a flicker of humour coming to life in spite of the fury burning in his blood. Tony’s outraged noise turned the flicker into a flame.


“—but I find generally telling them what to do isn’t the best way to handle the relationship, you hear what I’m saying?”


Chapter 65