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

“I hate you!” Ali insisted over heaving lungfuls of air. “I hate you, I hate you, Ihateyou!”


Yazid laughed, euphoric, and seized a pillow that had strayed from one of their boxes, managing to trap Ali on the mattress by sitting on his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. “Be very careful what you say next,” Yazid warned around a manic grin that felt too large for his face.


“Okay,” Ali panted, and narrowed his eyes. “You. Are. A. Massive. Prick.”


“I have a massive prick,” Yazid corrected, and shoved the pillow over Ali’s face. “Say it! Say it!”


Ali swore at him indistinctly, then whined his name.


“That’s not the password,” Yazid informed him loftily. “And that,” he added when Ali said something even viler, “is hardly fair on my poor mother who isn’t here to defend herself. Shame on you.”


Whatever Ali said was drowned out by the trill de-de-de-deeee-deof his ringtone. Yazid grinned, lifting the pillow to beam at Ali’s scowling face.


Chapter 67