The Score

The third installment in the Off-Campus series follows Allie Hayes, a senior drama major at Briar University, and Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis, a senior hockey player and self-proclaimed ladies' man, as their one-night stand evolves into an unexpected romance.

Allie breaks up with her boyfriend of three years, Sean McCall, for the fourth and final time after he demands she give up her dream of becoming an actress and move to Vermont to be his homemaker. Desperate to avoid Sean when he announces he is coming to her dorm uninvited, Allie calls her best friend and roommate, Hannah Wells. Hannah's boyfriend, Garrett Graham, the captain of the Briar hockey team, offers Allie his off-campus house for the weekend. When Allie arrives, she interrupts Dean, one of Garrett's roommates, who is about to have a threesome. Dean reluctantly sends the two women away, and he and Allie spend the evening watching a movie and drinking tequila. Allie initiates a kiss, and they have sex twice. She wakes mortified the next morning, having never had casual sex before, and insists they keep the encounter secret.

Dean, however, cannot stop thinking about Allie. He calls her on consecutive nights, bluntly telling her he wants to sleep with her again, and she hangs up each time. He confides in his friend Beau Maxwell, Briar's football quarterback, that he is unable to get aroused by anyone else. Meanwhile, Dean faces a new problem at hockey: his former high school coach, Frank O'Shea, arrives at Briar as the team's defensive coordinator. O'Shea harbors a deep grudge against Dean for a relationship Dean had with O'Shea's daughter Miranda years earlier. He demotes Dean from the first defensive line and forces him to volunteer as assistant coach for the Hastings Hurricanes, a local middle school hockey team.

While Dean pursues Allie, she grapples with her own turmoil. She confesses to Sean that she slept with someone else, leaving him devastated. She also struggles with career decisions: her agent wants her to audition for a Fox sitcom pilot, but Allie feels uninspired by the ditzy character, which does not reflect the dramatic range she discovered while performing in a serious play directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Brett Carson. Adding to her stress is worry about her father, Joe Hayes, a retired hockey scout in Brooklyn who has secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis, a degenerative neurological condition that has worsened significantly. Allie chose Briar over UCLA specifically to remain close to him.

Dean shows up at Allie's dorm one evening, and the two settle into an easy rapport. He watches her French soap opera, Solange, and becomes genuinely hooked on its absurd plot. He encourages her to live what he calls the "Life of Dean" (9): doing what she wants without caring what others think. When Allie mentions she has always wanted to learn salsa dancing but has been too embarrassed to go alone, Dean encourages her to sign up. He also begins coaching the Hurricanes and bonds with Robbie, a talented seventh grader, and Robbie's ten-year-old sister Dakota, a precocious girl he helps with homework and promises to teach to skate.

Over the following weeks, Dean pursues Allie through explicit text messages during a group outing at a bar. After a night of internal debate, Allie texts him a single word: "Okay." They begin a secret sexual fling, meeting whenever their schedules allow and agreeing to exclusivity. Tension mounts when Allie hears another woman kissed Dean at the bar. She storms there to confront him; Dean insists he rejected the woman and admits he feels equally possessive of Allie. They concede they are not done with each other, and their connection deepens.

During the drive to New York for Thanksgiving, Dean reveals the full story behind O'Shea's vendetta. He dated Miranda in high school for about a year. They had agreed not to continue into college, but Miranda grew clingy. One night, she seduced a very drunk Dean; afterward, she revealed she had been a virgin. When Dean broke up with her, Miranda experienced a severe depressive episode, threatening suicide. Dean told her father, who pulled Miranda out of school, punched Dean, and forbade all contact. Miranda's account painted Dean as predatory, fueling O'Shea's lasting hatred. The confession helps Allie understand why Dean now makes his no-strings expectations explicit before every hookup.

Allie brings Dean to Thanksgiving dinner with her father. Joe is openly hostile, calling Dean "pretty boy" and telling him he does not trust Dean to take care of Allie, comparing him to cocky athletes who crumble when life gets hard. Dean is stung but does not tell Allie. The couple then spends a passionate weekend at Dean's family penthouse atop the Heyward Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, going out to a nightclub with Beau, Beau's sister Joanna, and Allie's high school friend Dillon.

Back at Briar, Sean discovers Allie has been with Dean and shows up at her dorm at 1:00 a.m., drunk and furious. He berates Allie viciously, calling her a "disease-ridden whore" (26). Garrett physically removes him. Shattered, Allie asks Hannah to call Dean, revealing their involvement for the first time. Dean races over. When Allie says she cannot do casual sex anymore, Dean declares, "We're together" (25), making them an official couple.

Their relationship deepens. Dean accidentally tells Allie he loves her while scolding her after a chaotic misunderstanding in which she mistakes him for an intruder and knocks him out with a paperweight. He confirms he meant it, and Allie tells him she loves him too. As a belated birthday gift, Dean takes Allie to salsa dance lessons, fulfilling the wish she was once too embarrassed to pursue alone. During winter break at his family's Greenwich estate, Allie bonds with Dean's parents and siblings. Back in Brooklyn, however, Joe reiterates his warning that privileged men like Dean fall apart when life gets hard, unsettling Allie.

Their happiness is shattered when Beau Maxwell is killed in a car accident after his father's car hits black ice in Wisconsin and strikes a tree. Dean spirals into weeks of grief-fueled substance use, drinking or smoking marijuana every night while functioning on autopilot. He abandons the Hurricanes, skips Beau's memorial service, and stops engaging emotionally with anyone. He misses the opening night of Allie's play, Widow, because he is high on MDMA. Allie confronts him, saying she has spent weeks cleaning up his messes, that she comforted a crying Dakota on his behalf, and that she herself watched her mother die of cancer and still faced life. She tells Dean her father was right, that she cannot count on him, and leaves.

At the next practice, the Briar hockey team's head coach, Jensen, announces a random drug test. Knowing the MDMA will appear in his results, Dean confesses privately and is suspended, effectively ending his college hockey career. He meets Allie at a coffeehouse to apologize. She forgives him but says she needs time alone, having realized she has never been without a boyfriend and wants to learn independence. Dean accepts and embarks on a systematic apology tour, making amends with his teammates, the Hurricanes' head coach Ellis, Dakota, Joanna Maxwell, and even Miranda O'Shea, who is now in medical school. He begins exploring a career in teaching and coaching rather than law. When Allie's father takes a fall, Dean spends the night at Joe Hayes's brownstone. Joe grudgingly softens, telling Dean he is not half bad.

Allie tells Dean she no longer needs time alone. Dean presents her with two plane tickets to LA for Allie and Joe, having secured Joe's agreement to relocate if she takes a West Coast job. Allie declines, explaining she is turning down the Fox pilot because the role is wrong for her. Dean reveals he has decided against Harvard Law and accepted a position teaching physical education and coaching girls' hockey at a private school in Manhattan. Allie then receives an offer for a dramatic role on an HBO series developed by Brett Carson, to be filmed in New York. Their futures align. In the final scene, their roommate Tucker walks in and announces he is expecting a baby with his girlfriend, Sabrina James, setting up the next book in the series.