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That assumes the US will coddle them on the way out, and the US has no reason to coddle them on the way out. I think the best case scenario is that the US agrees to maintain the status quo in trade (i.e. agree not to impose any unilateral tariffs or restrictions), maintains the US citizenship status of all Texans born prior to secession, and agrees to continue entitlement payments to those who earned them as they would US citizens living abroad. But that would still come with a hard exit date.
The most realistic scenario is that the US government simply rolls their eyes at Texas and acts like nothing happened. Now Texas has to take some affirmative action demonstrating that it isn't in the US, which I doubt it has the balls to actually do. This doesn't have to be something dramatic and violent like trying to take over a US military base or preventing the collection of Federal Income Tax, but I doubt they'd try even the anodyne stuff that isn't even illegal. For instance, do you think that Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (not to mention the entire House delegation) are going to immediately come back from Washington? Is the state government going to discourage (let alone prevent) its citizens from participating in Federal elections? Is the state government going to turn down Federal highway funding? Are they going to raise taxes in anticipation of not having such funding in the future? Are they going to barricade small roads at the Arkansas border and establish customs checkpoints on larger ones? Are they going to start sending their own foreign delegations to other countries? I think we know the answer to all of these questions.
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