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 my God, what are you doing?” Ali whispered.


The barista was staring; a couple in the corner were bloody filming them on their smartphones!


“Will you do me,” Yazid pressed on, “the honour of—coming back to our hotel room for filthy, dirty, sinful sex with me in a stranger’s bed?”


The anxiety burst, and Ali laughed, shoving Yazid hard in the shoulder. “Twat!” He laughed again giddily and seized that face in both hands to kiss the mouth fiercely. “Lead on,” he whispered against grinning lips. “And it better be the messiest sex of my life for that, you bastard.”


Chapter 92