Can texts that come in on my Votel number be forwarded to my own phone?

You can forward the incoming message, but not a two-way conversation. Create a workflow with an inbound message trigger, then add an SMS step that sends the message content from the trigger to your other number.

Chatting back and forth through that forwarding is not possible, because replying through our number while the conversation is forwarded somewhere else would be number masking.

The simpler option is to use the Votel inbox to see who replied and answer them there.